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<\/p>\nBy Terrence Echols<\/p>\n
Staff Writer<\/p>\n
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The Holy Cross Crusaders, the Catholic Youth Organization basketball team from Holy Cross church, had a very successful year. Both the JV and Varsity teams, which are primarily comprised of Jamesville-Dewitt High School students, won the 2014-2015 CYO league championship. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n The varsity team won their league championship in stunning fashion, 54-52 over St. Matt\u2019s out of East Syracuse. With time running down on the clock, senior Jake Binder put up a shot that won the game for the Crusaders. \u201cIt was his shot to make,\u201d said senior Matt Schunck. \u201cIt must\u2019ve been a heartbreaker for them, but I’m happy we won,\u201d said senior Jhani Jamison. They finished the season with an impressive 16-3 record. \u201cOur toughest competition was definitely Rosary,\u201d said Jamison.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Also on the team from J-DHS are seniors Josh Frank, Zach Gentile, Brady Wing, Anthony Cacchione, Jake Kalbus, and Frank Mignacca, and junior Pat Gillison. Most of the squad are Holy Cross church members and are coached by Ed Michalenko who is a part of the town board and Dan Deluma who is a dentist. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n The JV team finished with an almost unblemished record of 17-1 and is comprised of all J-DHS students. The Crusaders battled this year against teams that represented many churches in the Syracuse area like St. Matt\u2019s, and Holy Family. \u201cSt. Lucy\u2019s had our number this year,\u201d said sophomore Jake Sala about their only loss. \u201cWe had a good schedule,\u201d said junior Luke Mannion.The Crusaders play every team from their league home and away and then play a few non-league games. \u201cWe already won the league championship so we don’t care (about a non-league rematch vs St. Lucy\u2019s),\u201d said sophomore Eric Antosh. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n The JV Crusaders are a very tight knit team; they are able like to joke and have fun with each other while being successful on the court. \u201cOur team chemistry was really good, we played really well with each other,\u201d said sophomore Manish Duggal. \u201cThe funniest moment of the season was when (sophomore) Bennett (Chirco) hit the three in our first game,\u201d said Cramer, referring to Chirco\u2019s first points of the season, which he followed by performing a humorous celebration. Mannion and fellow junior Cramer jokingly said that Chirco was the team’s MVP. Though Chirco agreed, he was corrected by a serious answer from Sala, who sounded like Kevin Durant in his 2014 MVP speech, when he said Cramer was the team\u2019s \u201creal MVP.\u201d Other candidates from the team include sophomores Ryan Collins, Lucas Binder, Casey Kretsch, Ryan Archer, Pat Dye, Mikey Yonta, Matt Cappelletti, Nick Palin and Jack Mulvihill. They are joined by junior Evan Neugebauer. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n The talented group was coached by Kyle Halleran, JD Tessier and Matt Wise who are graduates of local high schools. Mannion believes the season\u2019s most comical moment was when the team discovered one of their coaches\u2019 Twitter accounts. \u201cHis profile picture was hilarious,\u201d said Mannion. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n You may ask, Why don’t these guys play for J-D basketball since they have all of this success? \u201cToo many practices,\u201d said Cramer, who also plays baseball and golf for the school and knows the everyday practice can be grueling. He prefers practicing a couple days a week during basketball season. Mannion said a reason for their choice to represent Holy Cross was that they honestly didn’t believe they were good enough. Cramer disagrees with Mannion saying he could probably play on the J-DHS varsity team but he believes CYO is just as fun. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Though they had a lot of fun, they were somewhat relieved to see the season come to an end. \u201cI was just ready for baseball season,\u201d said Cappelletti. \u201cIt was a long time, but we enjoyed it,\u201d said Duggal. The squad looks to improve in the offseason and repeat as champions like the Miami Heat did in 2012 and 2013 as for the departing seniors, they were glad to go out on top. \u201cWithout a doubt we will (repeat),\u201d said Archer. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Terrence Echols Staff Writer The Holy Cross Crusaders, the Catholic Youth Organization basketball team from Holy Cross church, had a very successful year. Both the JV and Varsity teams, which are primarily comprised of Jamesville-Dewitt High School students, won the 2014-2015 CYO league championship. The varsity team won their league championship in stunning fashion, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jdrampage.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jdrampage.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jdrampage.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jdrampage.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jdrampage.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jdrampage.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jdrampage.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jdrampage.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jdrampage.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}