Rarely in their interconnected histories have the Liverpool and Cicero-North Syracuse football teams encountered each other with as much as stake as they will next weekend.
Thanks to the Warriors’ 21-6 win over West Genesee and the Northstars’ 28-6 victory over Henninger in opening-round games Friday night, these two rivals will battle each other next Saturday at 5 p.m. in the Section III Class AA semifinals at Baldwinsville’s Pelcher-Arcaro Stadium, with a trip to the Dome and the sectional title game on the line.
The last time these antagonists met this late in the season was 1994, when they played in the sectional final (Liverpool won 13-6). A quarter of a century later, they square off for a date against Utica Proctor or Baldwinsville in the Nov. 9 title game.
They lined up in the AA playoff bracket after Liverpool repeated its AA-1 division regular-season title and C-NS finished second in AA-2. Knowing that a rematch of the 10-0 Warriors victory on Sept. 13 loomed if both of them won, the two sides did not look ahead.
In Liverpool’s case, there was the small factor of rebounding from its lone defeat of the season, a 28-0 shutout at Corning that broke a six-game win streak. At LHS Stadium, the Warriors would confront a West Genesee side that, after a 1-4 start, had won twice in a row to sneak into the post-season.
The Wildcats drove inside Liverpool’s five-yard line in the first quarter, only to fumble a snap that the Warriors recovered. That was as close as WG got to an offensive touchdown all night as it was held to just 106 total yards.
Following that big turnovers, Liverpool steadily put together a pair of first-half drives. Both times, it culminated with senior Jacob Vacco finding the end zone, on a one-yard plunge and then an 11-yard sprint.
Staked to a 14-0 halftime advantage, the Warriors wisely kept it on the ground. All told, it gained 371 yards and spread it around as Vacco had 125 yards on 18 carries, with Bryce Mills adding 105 yards on 16 carries as Dakari Mack picked up 71 yards on 11 carries.
Not to be left out, quarterback Brendan Mancuso gained 69 yards on five carries. And he answered Hopetan Wellington’s 96-yard interception return for a touchdown on a fake-field goal attempt by scrambling 18 yards for his team’s final TD in the fourth quarter.
Up the road at Bragman Stadium, C-NS, coming off its own shutout loss the week before (32-0 to Utica Proctor, where it committed five fumbles), found Henninger to be a difficult challenge at the outset.
In fact, it was the Black Knights getting on the board first when it drove to the Northstars’ seven-yard line and had Gavin Cook find Craig Reaves in the end zone in the opening period.
From there, though, C-NS clamped down on defense, never letting Henninger score again, which gave the offense a chance to establish a physical presence up front that gradually wore the opposition down.
Mike Washington’s five-yard TD run and Andrew Osier’s extra point gave the Northstars the lead for good, 7-6, and it took the second-half kickoff and marched to the goal line again, freshman Farouk Ibrahim finding the end zone on his own five-yard dash.
It was a pair of ninth-graders getting most of the carries on C-NS’s next scoring drive, with Ibrahim and La’Quan Lemon splitting the duties as Ibrahim scored again from six yards out.
Vincenzo Lattanzio’s interception set up Ibrahim getting a third TD on a 10-yard run in the fourth quarter, and now the Northstars could turn its attention to Liverpool and trying to earn its fourth conseuctive trip to the sectional finals.
