By Warren Kozireski —
Junior Joe DiRisio banged home the rebound of a Maggio Buccholz shot from the point 4:01 into overtime to launch Batavia Notre Dame United to a 3-2 victory over Webster Thomas and their first Class B Section V title as a combined program.
Senior defenseman Brennen Pedersen opened the scoring on his first shift of the game with a shot from the right point with Jameson Motyka assisting to stake BND to a 1-0 first period lead.
“I don’t score many; I just try to throw it on net and not have it get blocked,” Pedersen said. “I came off the bench and saw the puck coming out of the zone and I got up there and cranked it and got it on net.”
They made it 2-0 at 5:25 as leading scorer Ivan Milovidov grabbed a turnover at the blueline and scored an unassisted goal.
At 13:22 of the second Webster-Thomas sophomore Cameron Hall netted his team-leading12th goal of the season after an assist from Theadore Paprocki to close the gap to one goal.
After killing a BND power play late in the third period, the Titans tied the game 2-2 as senior Ryan Goel scored at 13:22 with an assist from classmate Trevor Veno.
BND then was called on to kill a Titans power play over the final two minutes of regulation to send the game into overtime for DiRisio’s game-winner.
“Stick to our game, we knew we needed to stay calm, we needed to possess the puck and everything else would fall into place,” DiRisio said. “There are no words to describe it.
“It’s a lot of history for Batavia—46 years for the Ice Devils and 34 years for the Fighting Irish and this is the third year that we’ve been together, and this was the vision,” BND head coach Marc Staley said.
Batavia Notre Dame will host Kenmore East at noon Saturday at RIT’s Polisseni Center in the New York Regional playoffs while Webster-Thomas gets an at-large berth to the state playoffs and will play Section III’s Skaneateles.
(Photo provided by Warren Kozireski/NY Hockey OnLine)
