A colorful celebration of the West Genesee boys soccer program’s revival, and the role 10 seniors played in it, only lacked a happy ending for the home side – something for which Baldwinsville bears full responsibility.
With an aggressive attack that kept on producing good scoring chances and converted enough of them into goals, the Bees beat the Wildcats 4-2 Tuesday night, just the latest happy trip B’ville has made to Camillus.
Each of the last three years that the Bees have won the Section III Class AA championship, it did so in games at West Genesee – though those were played on the artificial turf field, while this contest took place on the larger natural grass field that is WG’s regular home surface.
Before anyone got started, though, WG got a chance to pay tribute to its 10 seniors. Head coach Al Loucks offered praise to each of them – Kyle Fitzpatrick, Cody Faulkner, Logan Dirk, Jake Levine, Anthony Payne, Kyle Golinski, Jon Fetterolf, Kevin Jock, Bojan Topalovic and Brendan Whiting. They all got to start, too, and managed to keep the potent Bees off the board before the starters got mixed in.
One of those starters, Jake Sutherland, got the large home crowd roaring in the 13th minute when he took a pass from Stefanos Stamoulacatos, dribbled up the net and ripped a shot past Andrew Coughlin into the left side of the net, giving WG a 1-0 lead.
From there, though, the Wildcats’ attack went quiet for most of the rest of the half, allowing B’ville to settle in and start making a round of attacks. When, in the 34th minute, Casey Murphy got fouled inside the 18-yard box, Murphy took the penalty kick – and beat a diving Dylan Condon to tie it 1-1, where it stayed until halftime.
B’ville continued to probe early in the second half – and in the 49th minute, Murphy struck again, forcing his way up the middle and, despite reasonable defensive pressure, pushing a shot past Condon to give the Bees a 2-1 lead. Just seven minutes later, off the rebound of a corner kick, Jon Price fed it to the middle – and Trevor Pauldine headed it home.
Now down 3-1, WG increased its pressure, and in the 65th minute cut it to 3-2 when Sutherland, taking an accurate long pass from Kyle Golonski, crushed a shot past Coughlin and just inside the right post. Instead of getting into a defensive mode, though, the Bees made its own big push and, with 10:55 left, Dan Knight’s low shot found the net to create the final margin.
Pauldine, Jon Price and Stefan Merchant all got assists on this night, while Coughlin, continuing his late-season work in relief of Alex Bono, made 10 saves, one more than Condon.
Back up in Baldwinsville, the girls soccer Bees, who had lost its first game of the season to Rochester Mercy 24 hours before, rebounded with a big first half on its way to a 3-1 victory over West Genesee.
Wasting little time, the Bees scored twice in the first half to account for its margin, then matched tallies with the Wildcats in the second half. Angelica Romeu found the net twice for B’ville as Jackie Firenze earned the other goal and Emma Firenze earned two assists. Shelby Milne earned WG’s lone goal as Moriah Saidel recorded 16 saves.
Moving on, WG’s boys team played again at home Wednesday and held off Nottingham by a score of 3-2.
Perhaps drained by the B’ville experience, the Wildcats’ defense struggled in the first half, as goals by Edem Wemene and Almedin Bektic put the Bulldogs ahead 2-1 going into the break.
Only in the late stages did WG take over, rallying behind Stamoulacatos and Ryan Tinklepaugh. For his part, Stamoulacatos had a goal and earned the assists as Tinklepaugh twice found the net. Sutherland got an assist, too, as each of Condon’s 10 saves proved important.
