With apologies to the old “Schoolhouse Rock” Saturday-morning cartoon series, three was anything but a magic number to the Skaneateles boys soccer team.
In the quest for a third consecutive Section III Class B championship, the Lakers had three different chances to upend Westhill this fall – twice during the regular season, and again during last Wednesday night’s sectional semifinal at Jamesville-DeWitt High School.
None of those three instances resulted in a victory, with the last defeat the most painful as no. 3 seed Skaneateles fell, 2-1, to the no. 2 seed Warriors, who advanced to face Cazenovia in Tuesday’s title game at Chittenango after those other Lakers upended top seed South Jefferson 1-0 in the other semifinal.
Between them, Skaneateles (in 2010, ‘14 and ’15) and Westhill (in 2012 and ’13) had accounted for five of the last six sectional championships, so there was plenty of recent, important history to draw upon for this match-up.
Of greater concern to the Lakers, though, was the fact that it pushed the state Class B no. 8-ranked Warriors to overtime on a pair of occasions in September, but won neither of them, drawing 1-1 at Hyatt Stadium and falling 3-2 in overtime less than three weeks later.
In order to prevail in the third and most important encounter, Skaneateles needed to prevent exactly what took place just 2:29 into the game. Awarded a free kick, Westhill’s Cameron Rudnick converted it, and the Warriors grabbed a 1-0 lead that stood for the rest of the first half.
All through the early going, the Lakers probed, but could not solve, an airtight Westhill defense, but it stayed patient and, early in the second half, broke through when Tristan Custer’s long pass found Reggie Buell, and Buell fired it into the net, tying it at 1-1.
Having moved players forward and seen it work, Skaneateles hoped this would lead to a go-ahead goal. But it didn’t happen and, instead, Jon Holl converted just past the midway point of the half, and the Lakers could not answer.
Skaneateles finished its season at 12-4-3, enduring a tough schedule and giving itself a chance at another sectional title. Though the quest for a three-peat fell short, the Lakers will bring back a solid group of players for 2017 even as a great senior class that includes Buell, Custer, Matt Benson, Ryan Bailey, Matt Neumann, Luke Palmer, Dylan Viscomi, and Evan Goldmann departs.
