On the first Monday night of November, the Liverpool boys soccer team, which lost 10 of its first 13 games, will find itself battling defending champion Baldwinvsille at Jamesville-DeWitt for the Section III Class AA title.
While plenty of past Warriors teams had earned this opportunity, none were as improbable as this one, which went from languishing near the cellar of the Salt City Athletic Conference Metro division to the brink of a banner.
First, Liverpool had to win each of its last three regular-season games just to reach the sectional playoffs. Then it survived regulation, overtime and eight rounds of penalty kicks to shock then-state no. 6-ranked Fayeteville-Manlius in the quarterfinals on Oct. 24.
This put the no. 7 seed Warriors into Wednesday’s sectional semifinal at J-D against another surprise entrant, no. 6 seed Henninger, who had upended no. 3 seed Utica Proctor 1-0 to get this far.
It was Liverpool’s 2-1 win over Henninger on Oct. 17 that clinched a playoff berth, and now, with much larger stakes, the Warriors fell behind early, but took over in the second half to defeat the Black Knights 3-1.
Henninger had gone out in front near the midway point of the first half when Excallant Bienvenu’s 40-yard shot crashed into the top right corner of the net, out of Dan Schaeber’s reach.
But as the first half wound down, Liverpool’s pressure picked up, forcing Black Knights goalie Olivier Bievenu to make a series of close-up stops, which carried over into a continual barrage early in the second half.
In the 47th minute, the Warriors tied it 1-1, with Jack Pento getting yet another big goal for his side as his curving shot glanced off a Henninger defender and found the net.
Midway through the second half, Justin Pham’s tremendous pass set up Uttam Bhattarai to run down the right side and slide a low shot past a charging Bienvenu for the go-ahead goal.
Pham would clinch it with 8:31 to play, this time by using a well-timed jump to head a free kick from Mike Salinas into the net.
Trying for its own unlikely sectional title run, the Cicero-North Syracuse girls soccer team could not upend top seed and defending champion F-M in its sectional AA semifinal at Central Square, taking a 3-1 defeat to the Hornets.
F-M had not played a game in 11 days, while the Northstars had beaten Rome Free Academy 2-0 just four days earlier. But the Hornets quickly proved that it did not have any rust in its game.
Seniors Anna Hartzheim and Hannah Knych would get F-M going, Hartzheim taking a pass from Lauren Clark and scoring less than four minutes into the game. Then Knych made it 2-0 before the midway point of the first half.
Early in the second half, F-M got a further cushion when Knych, from 20 yards out, ripped a hard shot past C-NS goalie Amanda Byrnes. The Northstars did break the shutout late in the second half when Ashley Evans’ free kick eluded Haley Ingram, but its season concluded with a 6-9-2 record.
