Ending an 11-year wait for a Section III Class A championship will require the Cicero-North Syracuse field hockey team to pull off two wins over defending champion Baldwinsville.
One was accomplished on Oct. 3 at Pelcher-Arcaro Stadium, a 4-1 decision that showed how much confidence the Northstars gained from playing the Bees close in their 2-1 defeat back in September.
Now, on Sunday at Fayetteville-Manlius, C-NS would have to topple B’ville again with a sectional title on the line, both having made it through Monday’s semifinals in vastly different manners.
While the no. 2 seed Bees, playing on its home turf, scored three times in the first eight minutes on the way to routing Rome Free Academy 6-1, the top-seeded Northstars had to lean on an airtight defense to claim its semifinal 1-0 over Fayetteville-Manlius.
Twice in September, C-NS had blanked the Hornets by 2-0 margins, and the third encounter proved no different, at least in terms of stifling a young Hornets roster with just one senior (Lindsey Kilpatrick) on it.
Anna Melfi, Emily Kuehn, Mina Erickson and the rest of the Northstars’ back line waited whenever F-M tried to move the ball into their end. They, along with several teammates, spent the entire afternoon breaking up attacks and limiting the Hornets to two shots, both of which Ally Wagner stopped.
It helped, too, that C-NS, despite its own struggle to get much going on its offense, took advantage of a penalty corner midway through the first half. The ball ended up in a scramble and Allie Ball pounced on the rebound to put it past F-M goalie Catherine Barr, with Vanessa Wilkins getting credit for the assist.
