Not only does the Fayetteville-Manlius field hockey team have a chance at its first Section III Class A title since 2012, it will play the championship game on its home turf.
The top-seeded Hornets’ 4-1 victory over Rome Free Academy in Monday’s sectional semifinal at Liverpool High School helped earn that chance at glory, but the final score didn’t offer a complete indication of the battle it took to get there.
F-M’s 12-3-1 regular-season mark had earned them the top seed. But by the time it took the field against RFA, a full 11 days had passed since its Oct. 15 regular-season finale, a 3-2 defeat to Class B powerhouse Camden.
Meanwhile, RFA had to survive penalty strokes to knock off defending champion Cicero-North Syracuse in the Oct. 21 opening-round game, so the Black Knights, with a 7-8-2 record, didn’t appear to pose a major threat.
Yet the Hornets’ rust from its long layoff led to plenty of early-game mistakes, which RFA turned into chances on the other end created from its transition game.
That paid off when, at the 13:49 mark, Maeghan Rauscher, completing a fast-break opportunity, slammed a shot past F-M goalie Caroline Baril, giving the Black Knights a 1-0 lead.
Now facing some danger, the Hornets started to organize its own attack, and with 6:10 left in the half, Molly Quinlan, taking a pass from Christine Carter-Huffman, converted her own transition goal, and more chances followed, RFA needing great work from its goalie, Alicia Swavely, to keep it 1-1 at the break.
Unable to convert on penalty corners in the first half, F-M stayed patient, and 9:31 into the second half, Megan Josephson, off a series of accurate passes, slammed in a shot from the left point for the go-ahead goal.
Josephson wasn’t done, either. Four minutes later, RFA trapped the ball in front of the net, resulting in a penalty stroke that Josephson successfully managed to make it 3-1.
Junior captain Kathryn Colone, the trigger on F-M’s penalty corners, would clinch the win by scoring with 13:56 left, assisted again by Carter-Huffman. What made F-M’s run so impressive was that it got no goals from Sophie Craig, who leads the team with 17.
F-M will meet no. 3 seed Baldwinsville in Sunday’s sectional final at 3 p.m. The Bees knocked off no. 2 seed Liverpool 2-1 in the other semifinal, but lost twice to the Hornets in the regular season as it tries to pull off two post-season victories on an opponent’s home field.
