It turned contentious late in the fourth quarter of Tuesday night’s boys lacrosse game at Bragman Stadium between Liverpool and Cicero-North Syracuse, with end-to-end action, plenty of heated words and a string of penalties that continued until the waning seconds.
If only the Northstars had shown that fire and spirit earlier in the game.
Without it, C-NS could only watch as the Warriors steadily built a seven-goal margin and eventually earned an 11-7 victory to move to 3-0 on the season.
Having seen two games (against Rome Free Academy and Watertown) postponed by bad weather in the first week of April, Liverpool was eager to start again, and was catching C-NS in the wake of an April 7 defeat to East Syracuse Minoa.
During the first quarter, the Warriors held the ball most of the way, yet could only build a 2-0 lead as two other shots crashed off posts.
At the same time, though, Liverpool clamped down on C-NS, limiting them to Josh Pickard’s lone goal in the game’s first 20-plus minutes and then shutting them out for more than 16 minutes after Austin VanDewalker converted late in the second period.
The first six Liverpool goals came from six different players – Kyle Caves, Ian Conroy, Cabry Hildmann, Jacob Fahey, Ryan McGowan and Ben Root. When Caves, Root and Hildmann added third-quarter tallies, Liverpool, with a 9-2 lead, appeared to have put it away.
But C-NS woke up in the fourth quarter. Four straight goals, three of them by Nate Scarlata, made it 9-6 with more than six minutes to play.
Sensing some urgency, the Warriors saw Caves and Hildmann each put in their third goals of the night in the closing minutes, bridging Brody Guido’s tally with 2:33 to play.
