This time it was the boys turn.

More than four-and-a-half years after the West Genesee girls tennis team ended Fayetteville-Manlius’ then-record 329-match victory streak with a 4-3 decision, the Wildcats boys group halted a Hornets streak of their own last Wednesday. When West Genesee dropped F-M 4-3 in their regular season finale, it brought to an end the Hornets boys’ 287-match victory streak that began in 1998.

When the girls’ win happened on Sept. 3, 2014, it snapped a Hornets’ run that stretched over 21 years. F-M’s 329-match run was the longest active streak for high school sports in the country at the time.

The one common bond between both the 2014 and 2019 streak-busters was head coach Joe Mannara, who leads both the boys and girls programs. At the time of the girls’ historic win, Mannara was quoted as saying “Let’s move on, it’s one match and we have a long season ahead."

While last week’s boys’ victory came at the tail-end of the spring, Mannara had a similar sentiment.

“I think the boys had realized that they had gotten better over the season and we thought we could hang in there with F-M,” he said Monday. "We want to give F-M the respect for all of their success over the years. We didn’t want to jump around and go crazy. ... Mark McGuigan is a great coach and we wanted to kind of treat it as any other match at the end of the season.”

Mannara added that the possibility of his club ending F-M’s streak was discussed ahead of time, and the sportsmanship displayed by his group would be just as important as the result of the contest.

“Leading up to that match and then right before we took the court, we talked about it and I thought we had a shot. ... We don’t to be disrespectful,” the coach said. “When we did leave, and when we got on the bus, we had our own little way of celebrating privately.”

Exactly as the girls squad did before them some half-a-decade earlier, the boys team elected to rejoice in their victory with some post-game ice cream according to Mannara.

Despite the big wins for the Wildcats programs coming almost five years apart, there was, ironically, one additional Mannara joining Joe for both victories. Joe’s daughter, Mikayla (now a senior), was an eighth grader on the 2014 fall team and took a 6-3, 6-4 win in doubles play, while his son, Matthew, is a senior and earned a 6-1, 6-1 decision on Wednesday.

Only three days after the boys group’s big win over the Hornets, West Genesee carried the momentum over to Saturday, where they won the Class A sectional championship.

“(Wednesday) set the tone. I think for the first time in a good long time, I saw that we could play with anybody,” Mannara said. "From top to bottom, they all played very well. They all played confidently and produced the results at sectionals.”