Manlius — For the first time in five years, the Baldwinsville field hockey team holds a Section III Class A title.
Yet the Bees wanted to take it further, engaging top seed Fayetteville-Manlius in a spirited battle on the Hornets’ home turf in Sunday’s sectional final that ended, 2-2, before a shoot-out victory allowed F-M to advance to the state tournament.
B’ville had lost to F-M twice in the regular season, by margins of 1-0 and 2-1, but despite the closeness of those games, the third encounter proved, by far, the most memorable.
Twice, the Bees trailed, and twice it came back. Down 1-0 at halftime, B’ville stayed patient and, 9:33 into the second half, pulled even, 1-1, when Amanda Strenk converted on a hard shot from the left side, only to have F-M reclaim the lead less than five minutes later on Reilly Baker’s goal.
Still down 2-1 as time wound down in regulation, B’ville made one last run to force a penalty corner. And with 28.9 seconds, a perfect series of passes, the last of them by Strenk, helped set up Jade Earle’s hard shot from the point that zoomed past F-M goalie Caroline Baril to tie it again, 2-2.
So it went to overtime, and in the first of the seven-on-seven periods B’ville had several chances to end it, only to come up empty on three penalty corners, though Bees goalie Abigail Timmins also made a spectacular stop on Baker early in the OT to keep the game alive.
When a pair of 10-minute extra frames settled nothing, it was on to the shoot-out, where an offensive player has 10 seconds to run 25 yards to the net and attempt as many shots as possible.
B’ville went first, with Chloe Lynch. When the whistle blew, Baril charged well out of the crease to meet her, and forced a hurried shot wide. She did so again on Earle’s try a few moments later.
continued — Molly Quinlan was F-M’s second shooter after Christine Carter-Huffman could not convert. In practice, Quinlan had attempted a trick a couple of times, just in case she would need it for the shoot-out.
Now, as Timmins charged out, Quinlan popped the ball up on her stick and kept it off the ground, balancing it and not letting it touch the turf until just the right moment, when she lifted it over Timmins’ head into the net.
Carrying all the momentum, F-M saw Baril make a third straight stop, this time on Alyssa Bell. Then Josephson took her turn, not repeating Quinlan’s stick trick, but still sliding it past Timmins. When Shylea Dukat was unable to put it past Baril in the fourth round of the shoot-out, F-M had prevailed,
From these sectional co-champions, nine seniors will graduate, including Earle, Bell, Katie Doyle, Samantha Blais,Anna Mazurkiewicz, Erin Miles, Maria McCaffrey, Brooke Burlingame and Nicole Spinella. But the return of stars like Strenk, Timmins, Lynch, Dukat and Lauren Brushingham should make the Bees tough again in 2016.
