What the 2018 regular season has shown is that, if the Baldwinsville field hockey team is to claim a third consecutive Section III Class A championship, it will have gone through a more difficult journey than the first two times around.
All through the autumn, the Bees have endured severe challenges and have seen five different games go to overtime, more than in the 2016 and 2017 seasons combined.
And that included last Thursday night’s league finale, where B’ville went to Fayetteville-Manlius and went through regulation and overtime unresolved with the Hornets as it ended 0-0.
If that sounds familiar, well, it is. These same teams had played each other Sept. 13 at Pelcher-Arcaro Stadium and had the exact same result, neither B’ville nor F-M able to get on the board.
A month later, the storyline did not change. There was only a handful of genuine opportunities on both sides, though the game ebbed and flowed in terms of which team was more threatening.
During the 60 minutes of regulation, F-M probed far more and got open looks, though each of its 15 shots were turned away by B’ville goalie Hailey Boda.
When it reached the 10 minutes of overtime, though, the Hornets only had one fast break, which B’ville broke up.
Fired up by that stop, the Bees pressed hard and earned two penalty corners, which is more difficult to defend when it’s seven-on-seven. However, F-M’s defense was up to that task, making the crucial late stops.
B’ville now turned to Saturday’s regular-season finale against Moravia, where it broke out of its scoring doldrums long enough to record a 4-0 victory over the Blue Devils.
Converting twice in each half, the Bees had four different goal-scorers. Claire Vredenburg got two assists and Emma Brushingham one assist as Mackenzie Wodka, Erika Van Slyke, Bailey Nicholson and Olivia Wachob converted.
A day later, it was confirmed that, indeed, B’ville and F-M had the no. 2 and 3 seeds so would meet each other Oct. 23 in the sectional semifinal at Pelcher-Arcaro, the winner to advance to the Oct. 28 final against Cicero-North Syracuse or Rome Free Academy.
