Though nervous right to the end, the Fayetteville-Manlius boys lacrosse team was not going to get stopped in its quest to return to the Carrier Dome and get another shot at West Genesee for the Section III Class A championship.
The top-seeded Hornets got all the stress it wanted from no. 5 seed Corcoran in last Thursday night’s Class A semifinal at Cicero-North Syracuse’s Bragman Stadium, but well-timed scoring bursts and a fierce overall effort from Jack Wilson helped F-M hold off the Cougars 12-10.
At least at the outset, the sectional tournament fell just as F-M may have wanted, with an easy opening-round game last Tuesday where it ripped past Utica Proctor 27-1.
Against the Raiders, it was 11-0 after one quarter and 22-1 at halftime, allowing F-M to use its entire roster and not use its key players for large portions of the night. Jason Buck, with four goals, and John Cote, with three goals, led the diverse attack as Wilson, Casey Greene, Pat Quinlan, Erik Badger, Chris Rettinger, Dylan Taylor-Wolford and Jack Kinsella had two goals apiece.
And that led to Corcoran, who had knocked off no. 4 seed Auburn 12-11 in overtime in its opening-round game, avenging a regular-season defeat to the Maroons.
Given that F-M had handled the Cougars 18-7 just eight days earlier, on May 14, and had struggled to beat Auburn 10-9 back on April 29, it appeared the Hornets got the match-up it preferred – but it was quickly apparent that Corcoran would be tougher to handle the second time around.
Cote’s pair of goals pushed F-M in front 2-0 in the opening minutes, but Mitch Laffin and Sean Eccles answered to tie it, starting a back-and-forth pattern that would persist most of the evening, with one big exception.
Late in the first quarter, Alex Leuze converted, and in a stretch of less than three minutes before the horn, F-M added three more goals – two by Greene, one by Badger – and suddenly it was 6-2. Cote found the net again early in the second period to make it 7-2.
Yet Corcoran absorbed it all and, by halftime, had pulled back within three, 9-6. Then things slowed down in the third quarter, with only Wilson and Laffin finding the net and each side looking for a decisive moment.
It came within a span of seconds late in the period. Alex Waelder flung a shot hard off the pipe and, seconds later, Jake Pulver charged down the field and passed it to Wilson, who scored his third goal of the night to make it 11-7.
And F-M would need that cushion. Matt Eccles scored, and so did Waelder, to move Corcoran within two, 11-9, with 6:49 to play, only to have Wilson immediately answer Waelder’s goal six seconds later with his fourth of the night.
Though Waelder beat Brian Charlamb (who finished with 17 saves) with 4:14 left to again make the margin two and the Cougars had a shot at getting closer, the Hornets forced a turnover and burned the remaining time, fighting its way back to the Dome.
And waiting for them, again, is West Genesee, who beat Baldwinsville 12-8 in the other semifinal.
Every single F-M player back from last season carried with them the painful memory of its overtime defeat to the Wildcats in the Dome in the 2013 sectional final, and now they seek atonement, as well as the Hornets’ first sectional title in 21 years.
