In a three-year run where it never lost a single regular-season game, the Cicero-North Syracuse football team took particular delight in dominating its neighbors from Liverpool.
So it was only fair and proper that the Warriors were just as ecstatic and overjoyed when it put away the Northstars 10-0 Friday night at Bragman Stadium, reclaiming the elusive “Star Wars Cup” and, perhaps, establishing itself as the area’s Class AA team to beat.
Whatever happens down the road, though, Liverpool was going to savor every moment of this special evening.
“I was crying like we won a championship,” said senior Jacob Vacco, who had experienced all of those defeats to C-NS in his previous three years on the varsity team. “This rivalry means so much.”
“We planned it, we believed and we knew we could do it,” said senior Bryce Mills.
Indeed, the roots of this victory were planned in what Warriors head coach Dave Mancuso called his team’s “best week of practice in 10 years”, with all of the players and coaches dialed in to take the Northstars out.
Then, when the game kicked off, Liverpool went to work, and from the outset the story of the night was the way the Warriors’ defense smothered C-NS at some points, and at other times made big plays whenever the Northstars threatened.
Vacco and Mills, Liverpool’s pair of senior linebackers, set the tone, constantly finding their way to whichever C-NS player had the ball and not letting them go further.
The rest of the defense took their cues and, fittingly, it was a forced turnover that led to the game’s only touchdown as Brayden McClain intercepted J.J. Razmovski at the C-NS 27 late in the first quarter.
With a short field, the Warriors used its ground game to get to the end zone, Dakari Mack gaining most of the yards to set up Vacco’s one-yard scoring plunge.
Trying to get its offense on track, C-NS twice drove into Liverpool territory in the second quarter. Both times, Mills tore through the front line to sack Razmovski on third down to halt the drives.
On those plays, said Mills, “I saw a hole open, and we took it.”
Early in the third quarter, runs by Vacco and Mack helped take the Warriors inside the C-NS 10, and when the drive halted, Jacob Graser hit a 25-yard field goal.
Even with that insurance kick, Liverpool already had enough points. And any doubts about the outcome vanished when the Warriors denied C-NS again deep in its own territory with a fourth-down stop inside its own 15 with 9:29 to play.
“We bent, but didn’t break,” said Mancuso. “Our defense exceeded our expectations.”
Now at 2-0, Liverpool enters Class AA-1 division play and welcomes Henninger for its home opener next Friday at 7 p.m. as C-NS (1-1) travels to Rome Free Academy for its Class AA-2 division opener.
