Aiming toward its eventual Section III Class A title defense, the Cicero-North Syracuse field hockey team gave strong opponents plenty to consider late in the season.

A tight 2-1 defeat to Fayetteville-Manlius was followed, last Tuesday night, by the Northstars pushing reigning sectional Class B champion Holland Patent to overtime before taking a 1-0 defeat.

Through 60 minutes of regulation, C-NS’s defense held up quite well, and most of the seven-on-seven OT period was scoreless, too, until HP finally got the game-winner with less than two minutes left.

On Saturday afternoon, it was the Northstars at Rome Free Academy, and with a lone goal C-NS was able to defeat the Black Knights 1-0 and close the regular season with a 6-5-2 record.

The Northstars have the no. 3 seed in the five-team sectional Class A bracket, meaning that it is off until next Monday’s semifinal at Baldwinsville, where it will have a rematch with RFA, the no. 2 seed.

In the other semifinal, top seed Fayetteville-Manlius meets the survivor of an opening-round game between no. 4 seed Baldwinsville and no. 5 seed Auburn. And it all leads to a Nov. 3 championship game at Vernon-Verona-Sherrill.