Even with two regular-season defeats on the ledger, the Skaneateles girls soccer team knew quite well that it could still maintain the bragging rights in the long-standing Laker rivalry with Cazenovia if it won the third – and most important – clash.
That came in last Thursday night’s Section III Class B quarterfinal, where Skaneateles, the no. 5 seed, made the trek to the wet, windy Sean Googin Sports Complex, only to find a determined and very angry Cazenovia side that, by a 3-1 margin, would put an end to the visiting Lakers’ title dreams.
Context mattered a lot with this game. Those first two meetings on Sept. 8 (a 3-2 defeat at Hyatt Stadium) and Oct. 2 (a 3-1 loss in the rematch at Cazenovia) had revealed just how potent those other Lakers could be, and Skaneateles planned on a different outcome.
Yet it could not have planned the way Cazenovia had ended the regular season Oct. 18, a bitter 3-2 overtime defeat to state no. 2-ranked Westhill where Jayanna Monds had scored with 10 seconds left in the second OT.
Convinced that the scoring play was offsides and should not have counted, Cazenovia steamed for five days before Skaneateles arrived, and then vented on the field, much to the visitor’s dismay.
Right away, Sophie Kush had to make a couple of point-blank stops, and Cazenovia’s pressure never let up, even when, in the 12th minute, Audrey Burbidge took a pass from Casey Crawford and put home the game’s first goal.
Instead of an answer, Skaneateles kept running into more waves of forward-moving Cazenovia attackers, and in the 32nd minute the deficit grew to 2-0, Burbidge drawing in the defenders before finding a wide-open Olivia McEntee, who converted.
Five minutes later, it was a three-goal deficit as Cazenovia’s Kate Sullivan found the net. Those two goals, from unlikely sources late in the half, broke a close game open.
All through the second half, Skaneateles tried to battle back. In the 64th minute, it broke up the shutout thanks to Catie Woodruff’s goal, but all other attempts were swallowed up by an effective Cazenovia defense.
So this season ended at 11-5-1 for the Lakers, and three of the defeats were to Cazenovia. Fortunately, just five seniors – Hannah Power, Ally Pietropaoli, Keely Gregg, Emmeline Graham and Molly Rourke – depart, with the likes of Woodruff, Kush, Tate Green, Lauren Goodchild, Melissa Amory, Hannah Logan, Amanda Wetmore and Laurel Parker expecting to come back in 2015.
