Tiffany Ryan got the Cicero-North Syracuse girls lacrosse team moving toward a bit of redemption against the Baldwinsville side that kept them from the Section III Class A title a season ago.
Just as importantly, the rest of the Northstars jumped in to help out and by doing so, it defeated the Bees 13-6 Tuesday night at Onondaga Community College’s Murphy Field.
B’ville used that victory in the 2013 sectional final as a springboard to reach the state title game. But the Bees had taken some hits due to graduation and were missing two of its top players, Taylor Gebhardt and Kennedy Frink, due to injuries.
As a result, the Bees made it clear, from the outset, that it wasn’t in the mood to play at a fast tempo against a Northstars team that had piled up 40 goals in easy wins over Auburn and Oswego to open the season.
And that plan worked – on everyone except Ryan.
The Binghamton University-bound senior began her first-half surge by scoring 4:24 into the game. Ryan scored again a minute later, and a minute after that a third goal followed, so Ryan had a hat trick, and C-NS owned a 3-0 lead and the game wasn’t even seven minutes old.
B’ville would quickly respond with goals from Andrea Walker and Marjorie Dehm to move within one, 3-2. From there, though, it did not score the rest of the half as C-NS defenders Mary Kate Bonani, Stephanie Liberati, Lexxi Knoblock and Katie Uva put up a strong resistance and goalie Bri Stahrr made some big stops.
Ryan notched her fourth goal to break a drought of nearly 10 minutes, and after Liberati converted, Ryan returned to score for the fifth time with just 37 seconds left in the half.
Up 6-2 at the break, C-NS extended that margin when Christie Hahn scored 2:58 into the second half, but B’ville wasn’t done, putting together three straight goals, two of them from Stephanie Roberts, that made it 7-5 and forced the Northstars to use a time-out.
By then, the game had turned physical, and it would backfire on the Bees, as getting four yellow cards forced them to go a player down for the majority of the second half.
Meanwhile, the Northstars made B’ville pay for ganging up on Ryan. Courtney Kenny scored twice and Hanna Haven added a goal to stretch the margin to 10-5, and down the stretch Samantha Tortora, Miriam Ghabarou and Megan Caveny would convert to give C-NS a more comfortable margin.
