For the Baldwinsville field hockey team, patience is nice, but production is far more welcome. And the Bees would need both of these things to get past Saturday’s Class A regional final against Williamsville North at Cicero-North Syracuse’s Bragman Stadium.
Even with firm command against the Spartans, the Bees saw that fact not reflected on the scoreboard until a five-minute blitz early in the second half turned a close contest into a rout.
By a 6-0 margin, B’ville not only beat the Section VI champions from the Buffalo suburbs, it earned a trip to next weekend’s state final four in the Binghamton area and are just two wins from the first state championship in program history.
In many ways, the regional game was a return to the devastating form B’ville had shown through much of the season. That had gone away in late October, especially in the Section III playoffs, when the Bees needed overtime to get past Liverpool in the semifinals and a Shylea Dukat goal late in regulation to beat Fayetteville-Manlius in the title game.
With the pressure of claiming the program’s first sectional championship since 2010 off them, B’ville was eager to display its full array of skills against Williamsville North, but it didn’t happen right away.
For the first 10 minutes, neither side generated many attacks. Then the Bees began to swarm, pushing back the Spartans and probing through a series of attacks that eventually generated a lead.
With 9:26 left in the half, B’ville earned another penalty corner, and unleashed one of its specialties, with Amanda Strenk passing toward the side of the net and Mackenzie Wodka converting before Williamsville North goalie Sam Mallare could react.
It took a superb effort from the Spartans’ defense to keep things at 1-0 going into halftime, but once the break ended, the Bees unloaded in a manner Williamsville North may have not experienced, but that local foes knew quite well.
At the 5:37 mark of the second half, a B’ville penalty corner turned into a 2-0 lead when Strenk converted off a feed from Dukat. Just 44 seconds later, as the cheers from the loud B’ville contingent began to die down, they got a chance to roar again when Chloe Lynch found the net, again with Dukat assisting.
By the time Lynch hit on her second goal with 19:39 left, it was 4-0, and the game assumed a running clock five minutes later when McKenzie Carroll scored, assisted by Strenk, who made it four points when she landed the assist on Dukat’s goal late in regulation.
B’ville knows what kind of challenge it will face Saturday at noon at Vestal High School, near Binghamton, when it faces Section I champion Scarsdale, who claimed its Class A regional title with a 5-0 romp over Kingston. The winner of that state semifinal goes to nearby Maine-Endwell for next Sunday’s state final at 12:30 against Shenendehowa (Section II) or Ward Melville (Section XI).
