That long-awaited first Section III championship for the Cicero-North Syracuse football team is just one victory away.
Yet that was not the main story which emerged from Friday night’s 41-7 victory by the Northstars over Corcoran in the sectional Class AA semifinal at Bragman Stadium.
As the game ended, the two teams lined up for the post-game handshake line. Somewhere in the line, a Corcoran player hit a C-NS player, sparking a fight involving several players on both sides.
Ultimately, coaches managed to break up the fight and get all of the players into their respective locker rooms, though Corcoran players needed a police escort to leave the stadium.
It provided a sad postscript to a game where the Northstars did not start as strongly as normal, but soon kicked into the normal gear it has shown all season rushing to a 9-0 record and no. 6 state ranking.
Corcoran took a 7-0 lead less than three minutes into the first quarter when, from the C-NS 36-yard line, Tyrice Williams found Khalil Robinson in the end zone and Paul Porch got the extra point.
Unfazed by this, C-NS pulled even late in the period, moving to the Cougars’ two before Erik Pride scored, a precursor to what Pride and the offense would do for the rest of the game.
With the Northstars front line again dominating the line of scrimmage, Pride and his teammates picked up big chunks of yards throughout the second quarter on a pair of scoring drives.
Pride’s second TD was another two-yard plunge and put C-NS ahead for good. Another march led to Pride scoring for the third time from three yards out with 3:44 left in the half.
By the Northstars’ high standards, a 21-7 halftime advantage was modest, but modesty soon disappeared in a rush of 20 unanswered points during the second half.
Pride converted on a 10-yard TD run to cap C-NS’s opening possession of the third quarter. With the Northstars’ defense stifling Corcoran every time it had the ball, the hosts could afford patience as it kept moving the ball at will.
Conner Hayes threw his lone TD pass early in the fourth quarter, finding Lukas Merluzzi wide-open on the wing from two yards out. Then Jaiquawn McGriff offered a big play of his own by returning a Cougars punt 56 yards for a score.
All the while, things remained emotional, and one Corcoran player was ejected amid the post-play scuffles. After the game was done, things boiled over further, dampening the celebration of C-NS’s return to the sectional final.
Liverpool had surprised almost everyone by reaching the other sectional AA semifinal against Baldwinsville, but just like in their regular-season encounter the Bees proved too good, defeating the Warriors 52-14.
Back on Sept. 29, Liverpool had lost to B’ville 35-7 and fallen to 1-4 on the season. From there, the Warriors recovered to win its last two regular-season games and then stunned 6-1 Central Square in the opening round of the sectional playoffs.
Another surprise against B’ville proved too much to ask, though.
The Bees got on the board in the first quarter with a steady drive that E.J. Edmonds capped off with a seven-yard touchdown run. Yet that just served as the appetizer for a second period where the Bees would run over the Warriors with 35 points.
It began modestly enough, with Edmonds scoring his second TD on a 15-yard run in the opening seconds of the period, and six minutes passed before things began to pick up with a drive that Aquari Warner finished off with a five-yard scoring run.
Less than 90 seconds after Warner found the end zone, Liverpool punted deep in its own territory, and Chase Brown brought it back 44 yards for the TD, the second straight week an opponent’s punt had turned into points after Cameron Majchrzak’s blocked kick that he returned for a TD against F-M.
Though Liverpool did get on the board with Alex Ruston’s 24-yard scoring pass to Kaleb Ohlemacher, the Bees quickly answered, moving the ball to the one before Ben Dwyer’s one-yard TD plunge.
There was still enough time (1:14 left in the half) to get the ball again, which the Bees did, quickly driving to the Warriors’ eight before Dwyer scrambled across the goal line a second time.
Just like that, it was 42-7 at intermission, and Liverpool could only spend the second half trying to limit more damage, which it mostly did as a season full of ups and downs came to an end.
And it leads to next Saturday’s sectional final at the Carrier Dome, a rematch of the Oct. 7 clash where B’ville and C-NS traded points throughout the first half before the Northstars got away and won 67-31.
Now, a whole lot more is on the line, with C-NS seeking to end its long wait for a championship and B’ville bent on stopping them and ending its own six-year title drought. Kickoff is at 5 p.m.
