Right at the end of the regular season, the Liverpool girls soccer team got tripped up by someone that it could face again once the Section III Class AA playoffs start.
The Warriors took a 1-0 defeat to West Genesee last Thursday night, a sharp reversal to the 3-0 victory it attained against the Wildcats when it went to Camillus late in September.
WG remembered how that first game got away from them even though it applied all kinds of early pressure. Here, the situation reversed itself, with the Warriors owning most of the chances and the Wildcats counting on a counter-attack.
This strategy began to pay off when WG’s Olivia Price took a feed from Emma Parry and slipped a shot past Megan Merrifield during the first half. Liverpool didn’t allow many more opportunities, but now had to try and get even.
Through the rest of the game, the Wildcats defended its own end. Helped by the likes of Catherine Farrell, Grace Walker and Kelly Cooper, WG did preserve that lead, constantly deflecting shots as goalie Liz Croft only had to make seven saves.
Now Liverpool hoped to recover in Saturday’s regular-season finale at Cazenovia, who had just knocked off defending sectional Class B champion Marcellus 1-0 two nights earlier.
The combination of the Lakers still reveling in knocking off a power like Marcellus with Liverpool’s anger at its loss to West Genesee, led to a 7-1 Warriors romp, where Bri Kovarik ran wild and scored four times, adding an assist, while Carli Kovarik had two goals and one assist. Abeba Haley also scored, with Brisa Salinas earning two assists and Emily Dorr contributing one assist.
An up-and-down season for Cicero-North Syracuse may have turned more cheerful had it won either of its two regular-season meetings with Fayettevile-Manlius, a team Liverpool swept.
However, the Hornets prevailed, 2-1, at Archie Hall Stadium on Sept. 20 and then, in last Tuesday night’s rematch, edged the Northstars 1-0 in a game that was in doubt through 80 minutes of scoreless regulation and 18-plus minutes of scoreless overtime.
Despite this, and despite the Hornets’ having played to overtime the day before against Rochester Aquinas (a 1-1 tie), with 1:22 left in the second OT, F-M’s Rachel Dobricki struck.
Dobricki took a pass from Anna Hartzheim and slipped it past C-NS goalie Olivia Haven, who before that point had recorded 12 saves. None of the Northstars’ nine shots got past Hornets goalie Sabrina Suriani.
After all this, C-NS merely faced the task of trying to deny state Class AA no. 9-ranked Baldwinsville an undefeated regular season Thursday night Even on its home field, the Northstars found the task too much, taking a 5-0 defeat to the Bees.
That first meeting on Sept. 27 had gone 5-1 in B’ville’s favor. The second time around, the best C-NS could do was keep things close in the first half, only trailing 1-0 before the Bees overwhelmed them late.
Chloe Gordon, getting her turn in the net, made seven saves, but the Bees proved too much as Mackenzie Shaffner netted a pair goals, with the others going to Katie Pascale, Adrianna Sposato and Kaitlin Kelly. The Northstars managed just five shots all night.
Then C-NS lost, 3-2, to Whitesboro in Saturday’s regular-season finale. Goals by Marissa Bukowski and Haley Imbesi, with an assist from Morgan Siechen, did not quite prove enough as Haylee Smith scored twice for Whitesboro and Kayla Alsheimer got two assists, with Ashley Hewko getting one goal and one assist.
Despite all this, C-NS, with its 6-9-1 record, slid into the no. 6 seed for the sectional Class AA playoffs, and would meet no. 3 seed Rome Free Academy Wednesday night at RFA Stadium just as no. 2 seed Liverpool hosted no. 7 seed Auburn. Wins would put the Northstars and Warriors against each other in next week’s semifinals.
