Six years removed from its last Section III Class A championship, the East Syracuse Minoa boys soccer team had a glorious opportunity to end that drought.
All the no. 2 seed Spartans has to do was knock off no. 4 seed Watertown in this Saturday’s sectional final, played right down the road on the turf at Fayetteville-Manlius. Game time is 3 p.m.
Getting to that final was far from easy. First, there was the tense 2-1 quarterfinal win at home over Jamesville-DeWitt on Oct. 19. Then ESM had to knock off no. 6 seed and defending champion New Hartford in last Wednesday’s sectional semifinal at Cicero-North Syracuse’s Bragman Stadium.
Unlike with J-D, ESM fell behind New Hartford, but a fair amount of resilience, combined with the singular skills of Kyle Scalzo, produced another 2-1 playoff victory in this clash of Spartan sides.
For a while, the game had the feel of one of those soccer quirks where one team controlled most of the possession, yet the other pulled it out through stellar defense and work in goal.
New Hartford, despite having the ball in its own end most of the first half, led 1-0 at intermission and were seeing its pair of netminders, Nick Buchholz and Mike Nassif, combine for 15 saves.
Yet ESM stayed patient, and when it was needed, Kyle Scalzo delivered his magic.
It was Scalzo converting near the midway point of the second half off a feed from Safet Suljic to tie it up, 1-1. Then, with five minutes left in regulation, Ty Mulcahy’s pass found its way to Scalzo, who put home his 24th goal of the season.
That proved enough, and while ESM was hanging on, the bracket was turning in its favor because top-seeded Fulton, who had beaten the Spartans two weeks earlier, lost, 1-0, to Watertown in the other semifinal.
So it’s the Cyclones, who also beat PSLA-Fowler earlier in the sectional tournament, that stands between ESM and the sectional championship.
