A season ago, the West Genesee football team had to get past Liverpool to reach the Section III Class AA championship game. Now they’ll meet again in post-season play.
The Wildcats’ 27-14 victory over Rome Free Academy Friday night, combined with a thrilling 42-35 win by Fayetteville-Manlius over Baldwinsville, created a three-way tie for third place in the Class AA-2 division.
WG, along with the Bees and Hornets, all had 2-3 league records. Due to the first-half points tiebreaker, B’ville took the third spot, which meant that the Wildcats’ narrow 25-23 win over F-M a week earlier gave it the head-to-head win needed to finish fourth.
As such, the Wildcats will meet Liverpool, the regular-season champions in the AA-1 division, next Friday at LHS Stadium, an opportunity it would not have enjoyed had it not won at RFA.
Things were scoreless until the second quarter, when WG’s ground attack produced a pair of touchdowns. Exavier Brumfield scored both of them, on runs of 35 and 15 yards, helping the Wildcats take a 14-0 lead to the break.
Brumfield scored a third time on a seven-yard run in the third quarter, and WG’s defense put up points when Colin McAvan returned an interception to the end zone, not allowing any points of its own until the BlackKnights got a pair of fourth-quarter TD’s.
As that was going on, in Class C Skaneateles was at Jordan-Elbridge, needing to win this game to keep its post-season hopes alive following back-to-back defeats to Cato-Meridian and General Brown – and with a big second quarter, the Lakers got that win, pulling away to defeat the Eagles 55-13.
J-E gave its home fans a reason to cheer when Avante Brown took off on a 51-yard dash to the end zone, answering Skaneateles’ first-quarter TD on a two-yard pass from James Musso to Nick Wamp.
But the 7-7 tie got broken by Skaneateles putting up 28 unanswered points in that second period. Time and again, Musso’s passes would set up short scoring runs as Grayson Brunelle scored twice from nine yards out and Musso scrambled six yards for another TD.
To cap off this surge, Musso threw a 15-yard TD pass to Wamp just before halftime, but the Lakers were far from content, even with a 35-7 margin.
Musso threw TD passes of eight yards to Colin Cox and 56 yards to Wamp as part of a 20-point third quarter. For the night, Musso completed 19 of 34 passes for 284 yards, with Wamp catching nine passes for 153 yards and Brunelle rushing for 124 yards on 16 carries.
On Sunday, Skaneateles found out that, indeed, it did have a sectional playoff wild card, which means that, on Friday at 7 p.m., it must travel north to face 7-0, state Class C no. 4-ranked Lowville.
In its seven victories, the Red Raiders have outscored its opponents a combined 363-91, never scoring less than 41 points in any game. That’s what the Lakers have to overcome in order to reach a sectional semifinal against Canastota or General Brown, either of which would be a rematch of a regular-season game for Skaneateles.
