What the Liverpool girls soccer team has held for 12 months is something Baldwinsville has wanted back ever since.
True, the Warriors and Bees shared the Section III Class AA title a year ago, but Liverpool survived penalty kicks and reached the state tournament after B’ville thought a disallowed goal in the title game should have counted.
That has served as a primary motivator for the Bees, through a long off-season and then a regular season where the Warriors managed to split two games with them, each side winning on their respective home fields.
Everything gets settled Saturday at 5 p.m. at SUNY-Cortland in the wake of Wednesday night’s semifinals at Christian Brothers Academy’s Alibrandi Stadium, where both of the top seeds received some scares, but survived.
Liverpool went first, against no. 3 seed Rome Free Academy, and the short-handed Warriors surrendered an early 2-0 lead, but recovered and went on to beat the Black Knights 4-2.
An illness kept senior midfielder Emily Dorr out of the lineup. This really hurt the Warriors on the defensive end as RFA, a perfect 11-0 in the Tri-Valley League this fall, tore right through Liverpool’s weakened defenses.
Yet that followed a 24-second sequence early in the first half where Bri Kovarik twice exploited the Black Knights’ aggression, first with a long run around the back line that led to a solo breakaway and a goal, and then with a long pass that found Carli Kovarik in full stride for a second goal.
Trailing 2-0, RFA brushed it off and, three minutes later, got on the board with Alysia Pacheco’s goal. The end-to-end action drained both defenses, and the Black Knights took advantage of a Liverpool corner kick to mount its own fast break that Katherine Balog converted into a tying goal in the 24th minute.
But the 2-2 tie didn’t last too long, either, as three minutes later Bri Kovarik timed another lengthy delivery to her sister, and Carli Kovarik delivered her second goal.
Only here did things settle down, Liverpool hanging on its 3-2 lead by halftime and then adjusting its defense in the second half to take away most of the space RFA’s fast forwards had found in the early going.
Not sitting on its lead, the Warriors worked for an insurance goal, and Bri Kovarik gave it to them with 9:15 left, taking the ball at midfield and sprinting past the Black Knights’ back line again before firing it past Kaitlyn Salce for the clincher.
Once it was done, Liverpool watched B’ville overcome a goal from Fayetteville-Manlius in first 90 seconds to prevail 2-1 over the Hornets in the other semifinal, setting up another Warriors-Bees sectional title showdown.
