The Fayetteville-Manlius baseball team seems to have Cicero-North Syracuse's number this early in the season. For the second time in the last three days, F-M defeated C-NS, this time by an 11-2 victory at NBT Bank Stadium as part of the ALS Strike Out Tournament.
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"Taking two games from C-NS is huge for our program," said Fayetteville-Manlius coach Cory Nelson. "C-NS was previously undefeated and is a great team and we have just played extremely well in both of our wins against them. I'm very proud of how our team played today. It shows a great deal of poise from a young and talented team and we are looking forward to riding this momentum into the rest of our regular season."
Michael Dutch, Samuel Kuss and Ethan Powell all drove in two runs for the Hornets (2-4), who held a 4-0 lead after the first inning.
"On the offensive side of the ball, we faced a very good pitcher in C-NS' Bryce Zicaro and we capitalized early with a good hitting approach," said Nelson. "The lineup 1 through 9 today was locked in and put together good at-bat after good at-bat to keep the pressure on C-NS and the momentum on our side."
The Hornets added two runs in the fifth inning and five in the seventh inning to secure the win.
"The key to our win was a great start from Danny Swift with a solid relief outing from Sam Kuss," added Nelson. "Both pitchers worked ahead in the count and kept a very good hitting C-NS team off balance. In addition to that, we played great defense behind them."
Swift and Kuss combined on a four-hitter and limited the Northstars to just two runs in the fourth inning.
Grayson Giddings was 2-for-2 with a run batted in for Cicero-North Syracuse (6-2).
Fayetteville-Manlius will host Baldwinsville on Thursday. The Northstars will host Rome Free Academy on Friday.
