Seven times in the last eight seasons, the Baldwinsville boys soccer team was a participant in the Section III Class AA championship game, winning six of them. And while many of those finals took place at Liverpool, none of them were against Liverpool.
In fact, the Warriors hadn’t made any sectional title game for 12 long years – a drought that would, ironically enough, would end at the Bees’ expense.
On a chilly Wednesday night at Fulton, no. 2 seed B’ville tried to beat no. 3 seed Liverpool for the third time this season, only to get roughed up by a physical, aggressive Warriors defense that made an early lead stick and left the Bees on the wrong side of a 1-0 defeat.’
Part of the reason the Bees had a no. 2 seed and no. 17 state AA ranking was how it did in the regular season against Liverpool, riding an early goal from Brandon Mimas past the Warriors 1-0 in the Aug. 31 season opener and prevailing again 4-0 at home a few weeks later.
Given the strong defense both teams possessed, and the cold conditions at Fulton, it wasn’t surprising that the playoff meeting between B’ville and Liverpool settled into an early stalemate, which suited the Warriors since it broke the pattern of the previous two losses to the Bees.
Then Liverpool broke through when Owen Valentine sent a pass toward the net and Aleksander Dzodic took it, eventually gunning the ball past Bees goalkeeper D.J. Moore.
Other than that single lapse, the Bees’ defense was its usual stingy self, limiting Liverpool to just four shots. The only problem was that the Warriors proved equally difficult to solve, spending the entire night frustrating B’ville’s forwards.
So instead of a chance to earn a seventh sectional title within the span of a decade, B’ville had to watch as, on its home field Tuesday night, Liverpool went after top seed Fayetteville-Manlius, who got this far with back-to-back 4-1 wins over CBA and Nottingham.
Following this 13-4-1 season, B’ville will see a strong senior group depart that includes Jake Guidone, Mike Brussel, Zach Bush, Connor Carhart and Jensen Stan. But plenty of talent is back in 2017, including Moore, Mimas, Ben Kinslow and D.J. Taylor.
