For the fifth consecutive year, the Jamesville-DeWitt girls soccer team thwarted Whitesboro’s championship dreams.

This time, it took place in Tuesday night’s Section III Class A semifinal at Chittenango High School, where the unbeaten, top-seeded Red Rams relied on Alex Catanzarite to pull away and beat the no. 4 seed Warriors 4-1.

With the win, J-D advanced to Saturday’s sectional final at SUNY-Cortland, where it faces no. 3 seed Marcellus – who knocked out no. 7 seed East Syracuse-Minoa in the other semifinal at Liverpool High School Stadium in a game that required penalty kicks to decide.

Of course, the state no. 2-ranked Red Rams had required its own round of penalty kicks just to survive the quarterfinal round against CBA on Oct. 23. Now, it met Whitesboro, whom it beat in every sectional final from 2010 to 2012, plus a semifinal victory in 2013.

J-D attacked from the opening whistle. It took just 6:19 for Catanzarite to fire a shot past Whitesboro goalie Emilie Mull and give J-D a 1-0 lead.

For the rest of the half, J-D tried, but failed, to add to that margin despite seven corner kicks, but could count on an airtight defense that, led by Chloe Hayward and Caroline Kopp, bottled up Whitesboro’s most dangerous player, Mariah Williams, never letting her get open space.

Early in the second half, still clinging to that one-goal lead, J-D saw it vanish at the 2:18 mark when Whitesboro’s Alexa DeCarr, pouncing on a rebound, flung the ball into the net before goalie Maddy Frank could stop it, creating a 1-1 tie.

It took all of three minutes for the Rams to answer, Catanzarite getting into open field on a breakaway and putting home her second goal of the night. Just as important was the save Frank made in the 48th minute on Williams’ hard shot to the net.

Things settled down from there, J-D slowly regaining control of the possession. Then, in the 63rd minute, Catanzarite beat Mull one more time for her third goal, giving the Rams a cushion, and Elena Haarer would tack on another goal with 4:06 left as Kopp, Alex Fontana and Sophia Domkopoulos each earned assists.

While J-D was putting away Whitesboro, ESM was in the midst of a long, draining battle with Marcellus, a team it lost to by a 3-0 margin just two weeks earlier.

Through 80 minutes of regulation, it stayed 0-0. Marcellus had a fair share of runs down the field, only to get turned away by a well-positioned ESM defense that learned, from its first meeting, how to shut down running lanes for the likes of Madison Belvito and Jade Sargeant. They also protected goalie Amanda Goodhines, who only had to make two saves.

At the same time, whenever the Spartans attacked, the Mustangs’ defense offered ample protection in front of goalie Emily Buschbascher, who earned five saves.

With the score 0-0, they went to 20 mandatory minutes of overtime, but that didn’t settle anything, nor did 10 minutes of sudden-death OT.

That left the outcome to penalty kicks. Each side took five turns, and they each scored three times and missed twice. Now it was single-round elimination, and right at the end, ESM missed – and Marcellus did not.