ONONDAGA COUNTY – When the Baldwinsville boys soccer team made its way to Liverpool for Saturday’s regular-season finale, it knew quite well that it might have to beat the Warriors somewhere in order to attain ultimate glory.
Holding the no. 5 state Class AAA ranking, four spots ahead of Liverpool at no. 9, B’ville remembered that it lost a tough 1-0 decision to the Warriors earlier this season.
What’s more, both teams knew that this result might determine who ends up the top seed in the Section III playoffs and, in all likelihood, have a bye straight into the semifinals, getting more than a week off.
They played on even terms until a sequence late in the first half where, off a missed Bees corner kick, Liverpool counterattacked and made the B’ville defense commit a foul inside the 18-yard box. Antonio Wilson converted the ensuing penalty kick.
From there, the Bees’ defense proved quite effective, rarely letting the Warriors organize an attack while, on the other end, it gradually picked up pressure, especially in the latter stages of the second half.
Yet whether it was a deflection off a Liverpool player’s arm that was not ruled deliberate to a free kick awarded just outside the 18-yard box that was denied, the Bees could not pull even and, again, fell 1-0 to the Warriors.
Before all this, B’ville, at home last Tuesday night, edged West Genesee in another 1-0 decision, the exact same score by which Liverpool twice beat the Wildcats the week before.
Unlike those games, though, the Bees got its goal in the first half, Will Stevens converting off a feed from Ryan Bullis. And that goal held up the rest of the way.
Two nights later, when Baldwinsville’s state Class AAA no. 15-ranked girls soccer side sought a regular-season sweep of Liverpool, it could not quite pull it off.
By that familiar 1-0 margin it won with in mid-September, the Bees fell to the Warriors, who rebounded well from a 4-0 defeat it took to Cicero-North Syracuse two nights earlier as Mia Wright netted the game’s lone goal.
So the girls Bees finished the regular season 9-6-1, a vast improvement from its 5-11 mark of a season before, and would carry greater expectations into post-season play.
With just five teams in the girls sectional Class AAA playoff bracket, B’ville, as the no 3 seed, goes straight to the semifinals against no. 2 seed Liverpool on Oct. 25 at Chittenango – nearly two weeks after the Bees closed the regular season against the Warriors.
Meanwhile, the B’ville boys are a no. 2 seed in its AAA bracket, but with seven teams in the tournament the Bees will have to get through a quarterfinal this Thursday at 7 p.m. against no. 7 seed Corcoran/ITC to reach an Oct. 25 semifinal against Utica Proctor or Henninger.
