In some way, the Baldwinsville girls lacrosse team’s crowded finish to its regular season – nine games crammed into a 16-day span – was perfect preparation for the post-season, since so many of those games were against high-quality opposition.
One of those games, in particular, held a key to whether the Bees would get a higher Section III Class A playoff seed, and that was last Tuesday’s lone regular-season encounter with Liverpool, where B’ville leaned on defense and timely scoring to beat the Warriors 9-6.
As always, the battle between these teams was intense and physical from the start. The Bees’ back line, led by Jaclyn Hingre, Laura Parker, Erin Nagle and Amanda Kline, kept Liverpool off the board for the first 13-plus minutes, and goalie Amanda Burrows made some nice point-blank stops.
Yet the Bees only had a 2-0 edge thanks to back-to-back goals from Sarah Klaben, and once Mallorie O’Brien put Liverpool on the board, the hosts fought back, forging a 4-4 halftime tie as O’Brien scored again following goals from Alexis Kline and Kasi Cabrey and Amari Pollard scored for the Bees.
The game had two turning points. Early in the second half, Liverpool held the ball for more than four minutes, but was unable to get the go-ahead goal.
Then, after an exchange of goals (including one from Abbey Foote) made it 5-5, B’ville went ahead for good on Kennedy Frink’s tally with 14:58 left. Four-plus minutes later, sophomore Majorie Dehm hit on the first of back-to-back goals, the latter of them coming when 8:24 left to give Dehm the hat trick and make it 8-5.
Though Kline cut the margin to 8-6 with 6:18 to play, Klaben answered a minute later with her third goal, and the Bees’ defense did the rest, Burrows running her total to nine saves and the team effectively running out the remaining clock.
That win over Liverpool gave B’ville a leg up on possible Class A playoff seeding, which remained true even though the Bees lost at home Friday night to Cicero-North Syracuse in a 13-10 decision.
These two sides had already played their league game, on April 19, B’ville hanging on to win 10-9 in cold, wet conditions at Bragman Stadium. Back home, and facing the tail end of this long, tiring stretch of games, the Bees would get a different result.
C-NS went in front 7-5 by halftime, and hung on despite four goals from Pollard and a three-goal hat trick from Klaben. Just five B’ville players found the net as Dehm, Foote and Taylor Gebhardt brought home single goals.
By contrast, the Northstars really spread around its production, with 13 goals from eight different players, five of them – Tiffany Ryan, Stephanie Liberati, Hanna Haven, Meghan Duffy and Sarah Bowles – scoring twice.
Before all this, B’ville hosted Fairport (Section V) last Monday night, and in a game made up from an April 11 weather postponement, the Bees played superb second-half defense to turn back the Red Raiders in a 9-3 victory.
All of Fairport’s offense came in the first 13 minutes, which allowed it to stay within range, 5-3, at the break. From there, though, the Bees’ back line clamped down, never letting the Red Raiders score again or get many shots, as Nicole Burrows only had to make five saves.
Frink, by herself, outscored Fairport, finishing with four goals and one assist. Marjorie Dehm found the net twice, while Taylor Gebhardt and Amari Pollard both had one goal and one assist. Natalie Kaufman got the other goal as Stephanie Roberts added an assist.
The win over Liverpool immediately followed, and with three quality wins in four days (it also beat Fayetteville-Manlius on May 4), B’ville (10-4) got a small respite before the loss to C-NS and the remaining homestretch, which included a rematch with F-M and a Wednesday visit to Brighton.
