A sophomore made his mark at the plate, and a junior did it from the mound.
Combined, Kyle Spinks and Ryan Pennell put baseball on the front burner this week as high school teams entered the stretch run leading to sectionals and the state tournament.
Spinks, a Dundee sophomore, apparently tied a national record by belting out four triples Tuesday during a 20-13 victory against Harley Allendale-Columbia. Spinks finished 5-for-6, scored three times and drove in nine runs for the Scotsmen. In addition, he earned the win in relief on the mound.
The National Federation record book lists four instances of players hitting four triples in a game, all between 1956 and 2001. The New York State Public High School Athletic Association lists three players with three three-baggers in a game.
Pennell, a Rye Neck junior with a 7-0 record and 0.29 ERA, did not allow a hit during a 14-0 win over Blind Brook on Wednesday. But it wasn’t the no-hitter that attracted attention, it was strikeouts.
Pennell struck out four batters in each of the first two innings and finished the seven-inning contest with 21 K’s.
"I guess to strike out 21 guys, that's pretty cool," Pennell told The Journal News. "This was definitely one of the best games I have ever thrown."
The 6-foot-3 left-hander walked two batters and recorded the two non-strikeout outs with third-inning groundballs. The four-strikeout innings were the result of third strikes that escaped the catcher and allowed the batters to reach first base.
Pennell threw a five-inning no-hitter as a freshman and two more to start this season to erase memories of an injury-disrupted 2008 season. He fired seven no-hit innings (with 17 strikeouts) last month against Valhalla in a 3-3 tie that went nine innings and tacked on a conventional no-hitter (with another 17 K’s) May 1 against Bronxville.
He has fanned 112 batters in just 49 innings this spring.
Brett Jennings of Lingleville, Texas, owns the record for strikeouts in a seven-inning game with 24 in a 1986 loss to Santo, Texas, according to the National Federation record book.
Boys Lacrosse: Corning East hits 700 wins
* Corning East scored five third-quarter goals to pull away for a 14-8 victory against Chenango Forks — the 700th triumph in the program's history. The win was No. 497 for coach Bob Streeten.
Mitch Keefer scored five goals, assisted on two and went 15-for-23 on faceoffs for Corning East, which is 700-123 since launching its program in 1967 — including 27-0 versus Chenango Forks.
* Iona Prep senior midfielder Brendan Grogan is recovering after suffering a broken vertebra last week during a win over Fordham Prep. Grogan is wearing a halo brace and is expected to make a full recovery from a fractured C1 vertebra suffered while attempting to check a Fordham Prep player. He ran off the field under his own power.
* Goalie James Maxwell stopped a point-blank shot with eight seconds to go to cap Hamburg's come-from-behind, 6-5 victory against host Amherst, in a likely preview of the Section VI Class B final.
Amherst led 5-3 in the third quarter before midfielder John Crean scored twice, and then Chris Feuerstein connected for the winner with 1:49 left.
Girls Lacrosse: Changing of the guard in Section V
Brighton remains a team to be feared in the Rochester area, but the Barons’ days of unquestioned rule in the Monroe County League have ended. Honeoye Falls-Lima earned a 9-8 home victory over Brighton on Wednesday to mark the Barons’ first league loss since 2003 and first inside Section V since 2006.
Mandy Willison and Jill Maier scored hat tricks against the six-time defending sectional champions, who lost for the second time in a week. Brighton, top-ranked in Class B by the New York State Sportswriters Association, also fell to Class A No. 3 Guilderland.
HF-L, ranked second in Class C, had taken Brighton to overtime in a 7-6 loss on April 15. This time out, Maier, Willison and Maggie Stankaitis broke open a 6-6 game with goals during a two-minute stretch of the fourth quarter.
Softball: Armed and dangerous in Buffalo
* Though the quality of ball in Buffalo’s city league doesn’t measure up with most of the Section VI competition, it’s hard to ignore the accomplishments of McKinley’s Kara Edwards. She pitched a perfect game — her third no-hitter in a row — to beat South Park in the first game of a Tuesday doubleheader, 8-0.
* Junior Jessie Winans swatted her 10th home run of the season as Afton downed Hancock, 11-1. Winans has been selected Daily Star Player of the Year three straight years.
* Bay Shore coach Jim McGowan won his 600th game in 26 seasons late last month with help from his daughter Taylor, who tossed a three-hitter in an 8-0 win over Ward Melville.
Boys Basketball: State committee to discuss instant replay
* The NYSPHSAA boys basketball committee meets Friday in Albany, with discussion of a recent National Federation rule change on instant replay expected to dominate the conversation.
The National Federation over the weekend gave state associations permission to use instant replay in certain situations -- such as potential game-winning buzzer-beaters -- in championship games.
New York committee coordinator Bill Higgins told the New York State Sportswriters Association he is expecting a close vote by committee members. Members of the organizations comprising the Federation tournament will vote separately at a later date.
* Greenport’s Ryan Creighton, who just completed his career as the No. 2 scorer in state history, accepted a full scholarship to Division II Franklin Pierce in New Hampshire. Creighton ended up with 2,799 points and two NYSSWA player of the year awards.
Meanwhile, No. 1 career scorer Lance Stephenson of Abraham Lincoln remains unsigned. Recent speculation had pointed to Arizona as a possible destination, but that seemed to become an increasingly remote possibility by mid-week.
Proctor and Rome Free Academy back where they started
The Tri Valley League has won the latest round in the ongoing battle by Utica Proctor and Rome Free Academy to obtain membership in time for the fall season.
The TVL initially rejected the schools applications on the grounds that they were significantly larger than several league members, creating potential competitive imbalances. But the two schools successfully appealed to Section III and were granted membership in most sports in the TVL, which would reduce the number of lengthy trips to the Syracuse area.
On Wednesday, a three-person appeal panel for the New York State Public High School Athletic Association reversed the decision on procedural grounds and sent the matter back to Section III to determine what should be done next.
NYSPHSAA Executive Director Nina Van Erk told the Observer-Dispatch the panel reversed the decision based on a procedural error in which letters written by the superintendents of the Utica, Rome and Syracuse school districts to ADs were not distributed by the Section III office until four days after the ballots were mailed.
Odds and ends
* In Section III boys track action, Westhill handed Solvay its first dual-meet loss in seven years and 59 meets with a 72-69 victory on Tuesday. Tom Welch cleared 12 feet in the pole vault, the last event of the meet, to give the Warriors the winning points and the league championship.
* Longtime Section V track coach Tony Canali died Saturday from complications of leukemia. He was 60. The former Canandaigua coach was most recently a guidance counselor at McQuaid, where he coached cross country and track and field. He was named the Democrat and Chronicle boys coach of the year last month after guiding McQuaid to its fourth sectional indoor track championship in five years.
* Union-Endicott will name its track at Ty Cobb Stadium in honor of Mike Miller this week. Miller taught and coached for 34 years at U-E.
John Schiano, who has written about high school sports in western and central New York for more than 25 years, covers New York for MaxPreps. He may be reached at johnschianosports@gmail.com.
