Many honors are streaming to the Liverpool basketball team in the wake of its remarkable run to the New York State Public High School Athletic Association Class AA championship.
But one of the biggest arrived earlier this week when head coach Ryan Blackwell was cited as New York State’s Coach of the Year by USA Today and its “High School Sports” section.
When Blackwell arrived prior to the 2016-17 season, Liverpool had not won a Section III title in nearly two decades. But the Warriors promptly claimed the sectional and regional Class AA titles that winter and advanced to the state final four in Binghamton, where it lost to Fairport.
That, though, was just a prelude to the magical 2017-18 campaign.
Liverpool put together an undefeated (20-0) regular season, and kept on winning even after its top player, senior Charles Pride, was sidelined by an ankle injury.
Pride returned just before the sectional tournament where, thanks to narrow victories over Bishop Ludden and Nottingham, the Warriors earned its second straight sectional crown, led by a strong senior class that included Pride, Nas Johnson, Alan Willmes Jr., Kyle Butler and Noah Issakainen.
Another regional title followed, and this time when Liverpool went to Binghamton, it claimed the NYSPHSAA title, rallying in the fourth quarter to beat 11-time state champion Mount Vernon in the semifinals and doing the same to top Half Hollow Hills East in the March 18 state AA final.
Having gone a perfect 26-0 to earn that crown, Liverpool took its lone defeat in the state Federation Tournament of Champions semifinal to Brooklyn’s South Shore.
To a man, all of the Liverpool players credited Blackwell, a former Syracuse University standout, with keeping the team calm and poised throughout their championship run.
