Given all the tough contests he has witnessed up close in his long tenure as Baldwinsville’s boys lacrosse coach, it only figured that Peter Fiorini would have to sweat and wait for win number 400 to get on the ledger.
But that wait would end on a cold, clear Thursday afternoon at Pelcher-Arcaro Stadium, where the Bees, with a big mid-game outburst led by Steve Petrelli, rolled past Cicero-North Syracuse 14-7 to push Fiorini to that milestone.
“I’m very glad it’s out of the way,” said Fiorini. “It (400 wins) is just a number, but it’s a great group of kids to have it with. It’s nice that I’ve stuck around that long.”
For a long while, said Fiorini, he had not paid much attention to reaching 400 wins, but even as he basked in that honor, he downplayed the significance.
“I never thought about it much,” he said. “My job, as a coach, is to have kids become better lacrosse players and better people. And we’ve got to do so much more to do in order to be a good team (this year).
Fiorini, who is stepping down at the end of this season, had seen B’ville try to gain that 400th win two days earlier, at Fayetteville-Manlius,but came up just short in a 17-14 defeat to the Hornets.
Back home, the challenge came from C-NS, who started the week holding the no. 15 spot in the state Class A rankings. And through the first quarter, neither side could take control, playing to a 2-2 deadlock.
But it started to turn early in the second period, when Petrelli and Cody Luke hit on goals just 32 seconds apart, the first of three big outbursts that established the winning margin.
Later in that period, Connor Chapman’s goal ignited a 90-second stretch where Petrelli would twice flash open and use hard, precise shots to earn his third and fourth goals. All of this helped B’ville take a 7-3 lead to halftime.
Knowing that C-NS had done its best work all season in the second half, the Bees quickly answered after the Northstars cut the lead to 7-4 on Andrew Burns’ goal early in the third quarter.
In a span of barely more than two minutes, Sean Barron, Connor Chapman and Mitch Rein all found the net, and the margin doubled to 10-4. Fiorini said that the Bees’ hustle to ground balls helped to preserve that lead.
Though C-NS tried to make runs, it never got closer than four goals again. Petrelli would get his fifth and sixth goals in the game’s late stages, while Chapman scored three times and Rein got two goals. Charlie Bertrand’s goal with 3:15 to play sealed it.
Two days earlier, playing through wind and rain at F-M, B’ville was quite successful in its attack, but still found that it wasn’t enough.
After a tenuous 1-2 start, F-M was riding a four-game win streak, and its offense gave the Bees all kinds of trouble from the start, racing out to a 6-3 first-quarter lead.
B’ville wasn’t quiet, either, but every time it tried to get close, the Hornets answered, and the visitors went to halftime trailing 9-6. And it got worse in the third quarter, F-M again doubling up the Bees and extending to an 11-6 lead.
Through a wild fourth quarter, B’ville did everything possible to catch up, but again saw its defense give up too much, especially to the trio of John Cote (five goals, two assists), Casey Green and Jack Wilson (each with four goals and two assists).
Rein, in defeat, led both sides with a career-best six goals, plus an assist. Petrelli scored three times as Luke got two goals. Chapman, Bertrand and Luke McCaffrey each scored once, with Barron, Connor Smith and Billy Hamm joining Chapman in the assist column.
