Joe Sindoni was not in the Carrier Dome Saturday night to see his Cicero-North Syracuse football team battle Fayetteville-Manlius in the Carrier Dome, but that did not have any effect on the outcome.
Nick Golembieski was in the building, though, and that certainly affected the outcome – and quite positively for the Northstars.
Managing to top anything his predecessor, Mitch Dunay, accomplished in any game during his career at C-NS, Golembieski ran for 305 yards and scored all six of his team’s touchdowns, carrying the Northstars past the Hornets 42-28.
With his combination of bruising power and breakaway speed when he found open turf, Golembieski continually burned a new-look F-M defense, first by scoring four times as his team built a 21-point first-half lead, and then by finding the end zone twice more to thwart the Hornets’ late comeback.
And it made everyone forget the controversy that preceded the game.
C-NS had self-reported a rules violation that took place Aug. 22. Amid the chaotic situation of moving practices to two different venues – first Central Square, and then North Syracuse Junior High School – and seeing an assistant coach get injured, coaches handed out full pads to the players, and some wore them, a day before state rules said they were supposed to.
Even though no full-contact drills took place until Aug. 23, the rules violation was reported, and Sindoni, the Northstars’ head coach, had to miss the F-M game, leaving Nick Commisso to serve as interim coach for this appearance in the Dome.
But none of the players were affected, so C-NS brought a full and hungry lineup to the Dome to deal with an F-M side that had an undefeated regular season in 2013, but lost several key seniors from the team that lost to Henninger in the Section III Class AA semifinals.
Golembieski began carving up the Hornets late in the first quarter. With C-NS trailing 7-0, and facing a fourth-down-and-one at F-M’s 24, Golembieski got the first down and then, one play later, plowed through the middle 20 yards for his first TD, though the missed conversion kept it 7-6.
C-NS proceeded to dominate the second quarter on both sides of the ball. Defensively, its front four constantly overwhelmed F-M’s offensive line and pressured Hornets quarterback Jake Wittig into quick throws and scrambles, leading to incompletions and a handful of sacks.
Meanwhile, with the veteran line of Jake McArdell, Jared Hemingway, Tyler Mosher, Ross Mathewson and Marcus Thompson offering the same imposing presence on C-NS’s offensive front, Golembieski burned the Hornets for three more touchdowns before halftime.
After Dom Fiorini’s 21-yard pass to Vinnie Ianuzzo on a slant, Golembieski scored on a 30-yard run midway through the period, and Fiorni found Connor Evans for two points to make it 14-7.
Then, after defensive lineman Jordan Schaefer recovered a Wittig fumble, Golembieski got his third TD on a 31-yard run just 53 seconds later. And as the half wound down, Golembieski used another 30-yard dash to set up his own two-yard plunge that, with a two-point pass from Fiorini to Keegan Wright, gave C-NS a 28-7 edge at the break.
F-M would not surrender, though. Just as the Northstars owned the second period, the Hornets controlled the third quarter, reviving on defense and putting together a pair of scoring drives.
Wittig eluded several defenders on a spectacular 30-yard scoring run that made it 28-14, and after an exchange of possessions, F-M cut the margin to 28-20 as Wittig’s 40-yard pass to Jared Shaw set up his own one-yard TD plunge.
Both sides now were engaged, but Wittig had to leave the game with an arm injury, with the left-handed Shaw replacing him at quarterback. That didn’t seem to matter much when Golembieski broke out of a brief slump and took off on a 45-yard dash to the end zone with 4:24 left, extending C-NS’s lead to 35-20.
Again, the Hornets refused to give in. Just 58 seconds later, Shaw found John Cote on a 33-yard TD pass, and then ran in for two points to make it 35-28, with enough time to catch up if it could make one defensive stop.
Just as he had done all night, though, Golembieski ran away from the Hornets’ pressure, breaking loose on the left side as he scored from 52 yards out with 2:38 left to complete his masterpiece. Darnell Rucker intercepted Shaw a minute later to seal it.
C-NS left the Dome with some injury concerns of its own. Ianuzzo hurt his right leg late in the game, and Vinnie Pitonzo, the team’s leading tackler in 2013, left with a shoulder injury.
Now all that Golembiewski will have to do is try and match this effort on real grass, which C-NS will face when it goes to Holland Stadium Friday to face Auburn, who lost its opener 30-8 to Baldwinsville. Better yet for the Northstars, Sindoni will be back on the sidelines to take it all in.
