CORTLAND – Though they have met plenty of times in plenty of circumstances in the last four decades, the Cicero-North Syracuse and Liverpool girls soccer teams do not have many championship showdowns in their annals.
Yet when they met Saturday night at SUNY-Cortland for the first-ever Section III Class AAA championship, it proved quite memorable – and for the Northstars in particular, quite satisfying.
It wasn’t just that C-NS prevailed 2-1 over the Warriors. It was the way it all happened, a three-minute scoring surge led by a talented eighth-grader, Abby Mackey, who healed a wound that dated back two years.
The Northstars were undefeated and favored going into the 2021 sectional Class AA playoffs, only to get stunned by Liverpool in the semifinal round. That result was a bitter memory C-NS players past and present wanted to erase.
Of course, the Warriors, who lost 2-0 and 4-0 decisions to the Northstars in the regular season, wanted to prolong C-NS’s misery, and took a step toward doing so when Alexa Marsh scored in the 24th minute, the only goal for either side in the first half.
It remained 1-0 until late in the second half, when Mackey, who had already produced 10 goals this season, took over, first by getting herself open and, from 20 yards out, putting in the equalizer past Gracie Sleeth with 11:25 left in regulation.
Then, with 8:14 to play, Emilee Rio, one of those holdovers from the 2021 team, sent a perfect pass to the middle where Mackey grabbed it, dribbled and then, with Sleeth drawn out of her net, put in the go-ahead goal.
With the win, C-NS advances to the state Class AAA tournament, where it will meet Section II champion Shenendehowa in next Saturday’s regional final at 4 p.m. at Nottingham High School with a berth in the Nov. 11-12 state final four in the Cortland-Homer area at stake.
