The last of the record 23 Section III championships the Fayetteville-Manlius boys soccer team earned came at the expense of Baldwinsville three years ago.
To attain title no. 24, the top-seeded Hornets will need to get past the no. 2 seed Bees, the only team it lost to in the regular season, this Monday night at 7:30 at Jamesville-DeWitt, the sixth final between these two sides in the last eight years.
This showdown was set up by Thursday’s pair of semifinal games.
At Cicero-North Syracuse’s Bragman Stadium, F-M faced an energetic challenge from no. 5 seed Henninger, but with one of its trademark scoring bursts put away the Black Knights 2-0.
Henninger had required penalty kicks to survive its sectional quarterfinal with C-NS, and showed the same resilience here, keeping the Hornets off the board for most of the first half with tough defense and consistent work by goalie LubendaEcheni, who would finish the night with 12 saves.
Had it stayed 0-0 going into halftime, the pressure may have built on F-M – but just 15 seconds before the horn, Grant Olick-Sutphen managed to curve a corner kick that bounced off the turf, eluded Echeni and crashed into the net.
Energized by that goal, the Hornets came charging out in the second half and required just 52 seconds to double its margin, Hunter Knutsen scoring on a shot from the right side off a feed from Cole Teelin.
F-M’s defense did the rest, limiting the Black Knights to just three shots and setting the stage for the final against B’ville, who used a pair of early goals to put away defending champion Liverpool 2-0 in the other semifinal.
A night earlier, at Christian Brothers Academy’s Alibrandi Stadium, the F-M girls soccer team threatened, for a while, to upend top seed Baldwinsville in its sectional Class AA semifinal, but had to take a 2-1 defeat to the Bees.
In two September meetings, the Hornets lost to B’ville by 3-1 and 2-0 margins, but didn’t let either game get out of hand. Now F-M was more confident in its own abilities, and the Bees had not played in 11 days.
Combine these factors, and the Hornets attacked hard from the opening whistle. It paid off when, less than 90 seconds into the game, Alex Vinci pounced on a rebound and hit a shot off Meaghan Wilson’s hands into the top part of the net.
For much of the rest of the first half, F-M ably protected that 1-0 lead.
Defenders Sarah Vaccaro, Laura Bonomo, Alexa LaRocca, Katie Krueger and Elena Paolini did not give the Bees’ quick group of attackers much space, and goalie Sabrina Suriani always put herself in the right position to make stops.
Had the Hornets kept the lead going into halftime, the pressure on B’ville might have proved severe. But just 18.1 seconds before intermission, Kelsey Delola curved a 30-yard shot from the right side out of Suriani’s reach into the top left corner of the net.
Thus, it was 1-1 going to the second half, and that single goal allowed the Bees to patiently probe F-M’s resistance while also playing its own sound defense against a Hornets group whose energy level never wavered.
With 17:10 to play, B’ville’s Hannah Mimas, handling the ball at an angle far right of the net, sent a shot toward Siriani, The velocity of the shot caused the ball to spin out of Suriani’s hands and tumble past the goal line.
Though it still had time to get back even and force overtime, F-M could not do so, and the Bees advanced to sectional final rematch with Liverpool.
Finishing at 10-7-1 overall, the Hornets will see eight seniors graduate, including LaRocca, Vaccaro and Cady Barns, but should stay strong in 2018 as Vinci, Bonomo, Suriani, Krueger, Paolini, Rachel Dobricki, Anna Hartzheim, Hannah Knych and Ashley Carter all are poised to return.
