Things are now even between the Baldwinsville and Fayetteville-Manlius girls soccer team, perhaps only to be resolved if the teams meet again with a Section III Class AA title at stake.
All that had gone right late in the Bees’ Sept. 17 win over the Hornets reversed itself Monday night, when B’ville went to F-M and got run over in the first half of a 4-1 defeat.
Several factors worked against B’ville. One was that it had not played a game since Sept. 28, when it beat New Hartford 2-1, avenging what was, at the time, its only defeat of the season to the Spartans late in August.
Aside from the nine-day layoff, the Bees were short-handed. A minor injury had sidelined starting goalkeeper Jenna Boutilier, forcing B’ville to turn to sophomore Isabelle Cartier.
Having not converted on many set pieces in their first meeting, F-M worked on it plenty in its week of practice, but as it turned out all of the Hornets’ scoring plays took place during the normal flow of play.
Just 3:57 into the game, Anna Hartzheim sent a pass toward the net, where Hannah Knych’s low shot slipped past the goal line. Less than four minutes later, it was 2-0, Chloe Hodge’s pass hitting Lauren Clark in full stride and Clark ripping a low shot that Cartier could not stop.
Not content with this, F-M continued its regular attacks, and in the 24th minute Hartzheim, gathering the ball at the point amid another sustained push, crushed a hard left-footed shot past a diving Cartier and inside the right post.
Even when Hannah Johnson replaced Cartier in goal, F-M was relentless. In the 35th minute, it was eighth-grader Morgan Goodman finding the net, poking in the rebound of a Lauren Farrella shot that Johnson could not gather in.
Behind all this was a superb effort from the Hornets’ defense, with freshman Alora Miller leading that effort as she tracked B’ville’s Simone Neivel throughout the night and rarely gave her space to produce.
Neivel did score with less than two minutes left, but only after seeing her younger sister, Makaelynn Nievel, leave the game with an injury of her own.
About the one benefit the Bees would get is another week to rest and have Boutilier recover so she might return for next week’s trio of contests against East Syracuse Minoa, West Genesee and Cicero-North Syracuse that closes the regular season.
