True, the opponent it had to get through was a bit different, but for the Baldwinsville boys soccer team, the destination – another Section III Class AA championship game – was the same.
When the no. 3 seed Bees edged no. 7 seed Fowler 1-0 in Thursday night’s AA semifinal at Liverpool High School Stadium, the prize was a return trip to the Liverpool turf Monday night at 7:30 for yet another sectional final showdown with Fayetteville-Manlius.
Five times in the last seven years, B’ville and F-M have met in the sectional title game. All five times – whether it was in regulation, or overtime, or penalty kicks – it has ended with the Bees triumphant and the Hornets despondent.
Now, though, the odds against the Bees seem even greater. The Hornets are 18-0, atop the state Class AA rankings, full of talent all over the field, and are bent on earning its first outright championship since 2004.
Despite all this, B’ville did push F-M to the last minute of regulation on Oct. 17 at Swan Pond before Jules Ngadula’s goal gave the Hornets a 1-0 win to complete an undefeated regular season. Less than three weeks later, their rematch will carry much higher stakes.
Just to have that happen, though, required hard work from both sides in the AA semifinals. First, F-M, with a pair of goals from Anthony Kousmanidis, fought off Cicero-North Syracuse 2-1.
Then it was B’ville’s turn, and it was playing a Fowler side that reached the state final four in Class A in 2012. Then the Falcons got moved up to AA for the sectional tournament, where it handled Henninger 2-0 and then stunned unbeaten no. 2 seed Utica Proctor 1-0 in the Oct. 24 quarterfinals.
Fowler proved a handful from the opening whistle, and right away B’ville goalie Nick Lindovski found himself making tough stops, handling a point-blank chance from Jean-Paul Mboyo just three minutes into the game.
Soon enough, the game fell into a defensive pattern. The Bees’ back line of Connor Ross, Alex Burrer, Evan Smith and Alex Sheperd made sure that the Falcons could not get anything other than long-distance, low-percentage shots, protecting Lindovski through much of the first half.
At the same time, Fowler’s team speed on defense rarely gave B’ville any chance to get close. But all of that changed late in the half when Mboyo drew a yellow card for protesting too much to the officials.
A series of free kicks for the Bees followed, and the last of them, with 2:10 left in the first half, hit paydirt when Evan Ingersoll screamed a 30-yard shot to the top of the net that crashed off the crossbar and fell into the net behind Falcons goalie Abdullah Abdulkareem.
As the second half wore on, though, the Bees gradually fell into a defensive mode, rarely getting chances to add to that one-goal lead, but also making sure Fowler didn’t tie it up.
Even that required some big saves from Lindovski on hard Fowler shots, and some luck, too, as it appeared that Mboyo had netted the tying goal with five minutes left, but it was ruled offsides.
B’ville held on from there, giving itself a chance to, once more, thwart F-M, who last won an outright sectional title 10 years ago, and doesn’t want to fall to the Bees again.
