BY JONATHAN SKUZA
BATAVIA, N.Y. — Chase Cummings did not play a big role for Batavia Notre Dame en route to their Class B championship last season.
When the senior forward was put into a bigger role this season, he answered the call. Cummings tallied a hat trick to help the United continue its title defense with a 5-3 victory over Webster Schroeder Wednesday evening.
”I just love stepping up for my teammates,” Cummings said. “We played good defense, we got pucks out, and just played a really good brand of hockey tonight.”
The senior forward got the United on the board with 11:32 remaining in the first period on the power play with some help from Sam Pies and Brady Johnson.
Batavia Notre Dame continued the offensive attack with a goal less than three minutes later as Sam Pies found the back of the net after a Jake Hutchins shot hit the back boards behind the Webster Schroeder net and popped out to Pies who fired it into the open cage.
Cummings extended the lead to three after a dump in into the Warriors’ zone took a weird bounce and found the back of the net with 6:23 remaining in the first period.
Webster Schroeder shook things up as they put freshman Cole Hudson into the game after the third goal and the contest started to sway back towards the Warriors before the period was out.
”Unfortunately, sometimes we have to pull a goalie to not so much that it’s the goalie in the nets fault, but it’s a team message of hey snap out of it,” Webster Schroeder’s head coach David Broussard said.
At the 3:25 mark, Mark Scott fired a puck from the point that was able to find the back of the net to get Webster on the board. Then, Anthony Pusateri pulled the Warriors within one with 23.3 seconds remaining in the opening frame.
Batavia Notre Dame did not panic and stuck to their game-plan despite Webster Schroeder’s late push in the first.
”I said calm down,” Batavia Notre Dame’s head coach Staley said. “I said I don’t care if it’s 9-8 or 1-0. We are up by one. Let’s dig deep, these games are emotional and you have to have that emotional regulation to not be too high and not be too low.”
The second period did not see much scoring as the teams traded chances as both teams showed off their skill and speed throughout the middle frame.
The United scored the lone goal of the period as Jameson Motyka aggressively caused a turnover and broke loose for a short handed marker.
After a carry over power play from the second period, Cummings wasted no time capping off his performance with another power play goal where he connected with Motyka and Johnson 20 seconds into the period.
”I just want to go hard out every opportunity I can, especially on the power play,” the senior forward said. “We wanted to capitalize on those.”
Webster Schroeder pushed all period including adding a power play goal of their own when Jake SanSoucie connected with Scott Wagner to bring the Warriors within two, but could not get the tying tallies they needed.
Behind a strong 40 save performance between the pipes from Rhys Tanner, Batavia Notre Dame was able to hold on and return to the Section V Class B title game where they will have the opportunity to be the first team to go back-to-back since Webster Thomas did it in 2019 and 2020.
”My coach pushed me as hard as he could,” Tanner said. “He knew I could play and now we are headed back to the championship game and I’m excited to be there.”
”We’re excited about going back,” Staley said. “This was the goal from the beginning.”
With Cummings two power play tallies and Motyka’s short handed goal, the United took advantage of their special teams to help them achieve another chance at glory.
”We work on special teams a lot,” Staley said. “If you look we always have a pretty good power play here at Batavia Notre Dame. We work on it a lot. We were 2-for-2 on it tonight and we had a shorty as well. It’s a 5-3 game and three of those goals were speciality team goals.”
Despite the defeat, Webster Schroeder never stopped pressuring Batavia Notre Dame and kept attacking even after falling behind 3-0 and having to make a goalie change.
”We never packed it in,” Broussard said. “They were resilient and battle back. We just didn’t have the ability to get it as far as we wanted to. We had some looks, but we didn’t execute on them.
The Warriors did get to see a glimpse into their goaltending future when they brought Hudson into the contest with 6:23 remaining in the first period. The freshman net minder stopped 26 of the 28 shots he faced and made some key big saves to keep his team in the contest.
”For a kid to come in cold like that and shut the door there and make an enormous breakaway save that should be on every highlight reel across the city for the next week, full marks to him,” Broussard said.
Batavia Notre Dame will defend their Class B crown against top-seeded Victor on Monday March 3rd at the Gene Polisseni Center on the campus of RIT at 7:30 p.m.
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