Having started their respective seasons with wildly contrasting winning efforts, the Liverpool and Cicero-North Syracuse football teams went back to the road to see if those trends would continue.
For the Warriors, it didn’t prove difficult, with everything going well in a 36-0 shutout over Central Square, while the Northstars had a much more humbling experience at Auburn, falling to the Maroons 35-28.
Of the two results, C-NS provided the bigger surprise. Just six days earlier in the Carrier Dome, the Northstars had ridden Nick Golembieski’s 306 yards and six touchdowns past Fayetteville-Manlius 42-28, and it was getting an Auburn team that had lost its opener 30-6 to Baldwinsville.
What’s more, Joe Sindoni, the C-NS head coach, was back on the sidelines after missing that opener due to a self-reported violation of players inadvertently putting on pads in August a day before they were supposed to start full-contact drills.
Yet Auburn cared little for these things. Playing on its familiar home grass of Holland Stadium, the Maroons stunned the Northstars by grabbing a 14-0 lead in the first quarter, Justin Valentino throwing scoring passes of 30 yards to Jack Burgmaster and 11 yards to Trevor Ash.
Those plays showed, right away, that C-NS badly missed two defensive cornerstones, linebacker Vinnie Pitonzo and cornerback Vinnie Ianuzzo, both of whom were sidelined with injuries. Thus, from that point forward, C-NS was in chase mode.
After Golembieski scored on a one-yard run, Auburn replied with two more TD drives in the second period to build up a 27-7 advantage. It included Leon Atkins scoring from five yards out and, on another big play, Valentino throwing a swing pass to Burgmaster that covered 53 yards for Valentino’s third scoring pass of the night.
Even with Golembieski’s second TD on another one-yard plunge, the Northstars trailed, 27-14, at the break, and it needed the passing game it didn’t have to worry about against F-M. Dom Fiorini obliged in the third quarter, throwing a 59-yard TD pass to Connor Evans that made it 27-21.
Unfazed by this, Auburn drove right back down the field and, from the C-NS 30, saw Valentino hit Ash for his fourth TD pass of the night, the two-point conversion extending the Maroons’ edge to 35-21 with one quarter left. All told, Valentino completed 24 of 31 passes for 318 yards.
Golembieski made another big play early in the final period, turning Fiorini’s short pass into a 53-yard touchdown. But just when it was needed, Auburn made key defensive stops down the stretch and hung on for the win.
Liverpool, by contrast, had gone through a tense 7-6 victory over Corcoran in its Sept. 6 opener, and was in no mood to have that kind of stress again at Central Square, a team handled by West Genesee 43-14 in its first game of the season.
The Red Hawks did stay close in the first quarter, holding the Warriors to three points, all coming on Augie Holekamp’s 32-yard field goal, but as the half wore on, Liverpool began to take charge.
The Warriors did so with a mix of plays, as Ricky Sisto hit Rashon Crenshaw on a 43-yard TD pass and Matt Sala scored on a 22-yard run. Holekamp’s extra points were both true, and Liverpool was up 17-0 on Central Square at the break.
A stout Warrior defense made sure that the Red Hawks never got the ball moving, and with Sisto churning out big plays, Liverpool mounted three more scoring drives in the second half, with Zach Khatib and Jonathan Stewart both scoring on short TD runs and Holekamp contributing a two-point run.
Liverpool now is at home for four of its five remaining regular-season games, including next Friday’s visit from Rome Free Academy, who sits at 0-2 following early-season defeats to Nottingham and Corcoran. C-NS, meanwhile, goes to Utica Proctor, who like the Northstars are 1-1 following a second-week defeat, this one 42-19 to F-M.
