This, at last, was the season that the Baldwinsville boys soccer team was supposed to take a step or two back and let other programs long denied the top prize in Section III Class AA stake their claim for it.
Yet when the sectional championship is put on the line Monday night at Fulton, the team in red will be there, again, trying to turn back Cicero-North Syracuse and go to the top for the seventh time in nine years.
All of this was brought about by the dramatic turn of events in Thursday night’s AA semifinals, also held at Fulton, where no. 4 seed B’ville avenged two regular-season defeats to Liverpool and stunned the top-seeded Warriors 2-1 in overtime.
They were tied, 1-1, deep into the second OT period. But just when it looked like it would take penalty kicks to resolve matters, Mike Brussel flashed open and, with five minutes left, sent a shot past Liverpool goalie Ben Bowers to end it.
The game merely proved that a lot had changed since these two long-time neighbors and rivals had met early in the season.
Liverpool had blanked B’ville 2-0 in the Aug. 31 opener at Pelcher-Arcaro Stadium. Two weeks later at LHS Stadium, it had required overtime, but the Warriors had prevailed again, 2-1, all part of a tremendous campaign that had helped Liverpool grab the top seed in the sectional AA bracket and move to no. 6 in the state rankings.
Yet when they reunited in the semifinals, B’ville was the hotter team, riding a seven-game win streak, and its confidence gained from those wins spilled over into this contest, where it didn’t take long for the Bees to go out in front.
In the 13th minute, Justin Lado converted the game’s first goal. For the rest of the half, the Bees’ defense protected that 1-0 advantage, utilizing its past knowledge of Liverpool’s attack methods to withstand them.
Yet it didn’t completely work, as less than six minutes into the second half George Betobaum netted the tying goal for the Warriors. And now the tension really built, as the rest of regulation, plus a 15-minute overtime period, passed with neither side able to break the tie.
Only when Brussel got his game-winner could the Bees exhale and run its win streak to seven, having seen Evan Ingersoll and Tyler Luciano pick up assists and goalkeeper Andrew Hahn make five saves to keep title dreams alive.
So with a 12-4-2 record, B’ville would meet with C-NS, the no. 3 seed, in the sectional final. All the Northstars did was take out no. 2 seed and state no. 9-ranked Nottingham 1-0 in the other semifinal, the only loss the Bulldogs suffered in 2015.
Just as was the case with Liverpool, the Bees didn’t beat C-NS in the regular season, though each match ended in a draw – 0-0 on Sept. 8 at Pelcher-Arcaro, 2-2 on Sept. 22 at the Gillette Road complex.
