At least for the moment, the Baldwinsville boys soccer team’s dream of a third consecutive Section III Class AA championship lives on — just barely.
In a tense battle Friday night at Corcoran High School’s turf, the Bees needed a penalty-kick shoot-out to get past Christian Brothers Academy after the two teams tied 1-1 in regulation and overtime.
With that win, B’ville advanced to face top seed Cicero-North Syracuse in Wednesday night’s AA semifinal at West Genesee — the same turf where, exactly one year earlier, the Bees beat the Northstars in overtime in last year’s sectional final. This time around, the winner gets Utica Proctor or Fayetteville-Manlius in the Nov. 10 title game in Camillus.
Just getting to CNS took some patience, and not just on the field. Originally, B’ville, the no. 4 seed, was to meet no. 5 seed CBA at Pelcher-Arcaro Stadium. But with the grass saturated and damaged by rain and season-long usage, the whole show got moved to Corcoran, and pushed back 24 hours.
The move to artificial turf was a huge boost to CBA, who has a turf field of its own at Alibrandi Stadium. Since the Bees needed more time to adjust, it was quite happy to get through a 0-0 first half, its defense continuing a fine late-season push.
Both teams would score in the second half — Adam Lauko for the Bees off a feed from Jon Goodridge, Kris Triana for the Brothers as Sars Bowman got the assist.
That 1-1 deadlock held up through the rest of regulation, plus 30 minutes of sudden-death overtime as the drama built up to a shoot-out — five penalty kicks for each side, the most conversions wins.
B’ville and CBA both made shots — and missed them, too. It wasn’t until Hobie Ramin beat David Anderson on the decisive kick that the Bees, by a 3-2 margin, could move on.
