As they met for the first time this fall, the Liverpool and Cicero-North Syracuse boys soccer teams could, at the very least, trade battle scars of their encounters with Fayetteville-Manlius.
Combined, the Warriors and Northstars gave up 12 goals to the Hornets, with F-M handling C-NS 5-1 in last Tuesday’s game at the Gillette Road complex.
Tyler Murray’s second-half goal was the lone interruption for the Northstars in the face of a Hornets attack where, again, the brother duo of Cheech and Nino Pagano proved unstoppable.
Cheech Pagano’s three goals constituted a hat trick, which is what Nino Pagano did against Liverpool on Oct. 3, following it up with two goals against C-NS.
As this was going on, Liverpool visited defending sectional Class AA champion Baldwinsville and showed vast improvement from the F-M game, even as it lost 2-0 to the Bees.
First-half goals by Drew Gates and James Brussel put B’ville in charge, but to its credit the Warriors kept the Bees off the board the rest of the way.
Now the question was whether Liverpool’s attack could find some life against C-NS, and for a while it looked like the same frustration – until a late breakthrough helped the Warriros pull it out 1-0 and get into the win column for 2020.
During a scoreless first half, Liverpool gave itself plenty of opportunities, but was unable to finish them. Constantly, C-NS goalkeeper Wyatt Dupell made timely stops on the way to accumulating 15 saves.
Yet the Warriors’ defense, led by Jacob Chajkowski, Gavin Tarbell and Joe Capobianco, turned back the Northstars, to go with Evan Buda’s seven saves, and it all paid off when Uttam Bhattarai, off a feed from Faisal Samim, put one past Dupell in the late stages to break the deadlock.
C-NS met Auburn on Saturday and got into the win column with a comfortable 4-0 shuout of the Maroons. A well-balanced attack featured goals by Tyler Murray, Aaron Huksic, Gagan Adhikari and Jake Trubia.
As that went on, Liverpool fell 2-1 to East Syracuse Minoa, seeing Jacob Chajkowski’s second-half goal negated when Christian Moon and Evan deBerjeois scored for the Spartans, overcoming 11 saves from Bennett Robb.
Liverpool takes on Oswego and West Genesee this week, this after C-NS plays the Wildcats, the Northstars also getting its own shot at Baldwinsville Friday night.
