A busy Wednesday evening of Section III boys soccer semifinals saw four area teams enter the fray and two of them continue to a head-to-head collision for the Class B championship.
Westhill, the three-time defending sectional champions and reigning state champions, pulled away from Chittenango 3-0 on the turf at Fayetteville-Manlius just after Skaneateles survived a 1-0 battle with Clinton in the other semifinal.
The first game pitted the Lakers, who had ousted rival Marcellus by that same 1-0 margin in the quarterfinals, against Clinton, a no. 2 seed who also was no. 6 in the state Class B rankings.
Unlike the Marcellus game, Skaneateles did not get out in front in the opening minutes, instead defending well as Will Pinckney, in particular, did a strong job turning back Clinton on a trio of corner kicks.
But it was on another corner in the 33rd minute that Skaneateles broke through. Tylar Moss sent a curling ball that eluded all of the Clinton defenders, plus goalie Owen Saunders, and tucked inside the net.
Though the Lakers could not add to that one-goal margin, by doing a strong job of possessing the ball in the second half it never allowed Clinton many opportunities to set up its attack, Andrew Neumann only having to make three saves for his third straight playoff shutout.
Like Skaneateles, Westhill had survived a tough sectional quarterfinal, having to rally to beat Cazenovia 2-1 in overtime after it had beaten those other Lakers in each of the previous three sectional finals.
By comparison, Chittenango, a no. 8 seed whose path to the semifinals was cleared by the early ouster of top seed General Brown, proved easier to conquer, even after a scoreless first half against a Bears side it beat 3-1 two weeks earlier.
Once the Warriors got on the board early in the second half, the pressure eased and it converted twice more. Jackson Powers had a pair of assists and Bo BenYehuda had one goal and one assist, with Andrew Centore and Dan Carkner getting the other goals.
So the sectional final next Monday at Jamesville-DeWitt will see Skaneateles try to dethrone Westhill, who beat the Lakers 3-2 when they met in the regular season in September.
On that same J-D turf Wednesday night, the sectional Class AA semifinals took place, and West Genesee was gunning to knock off top seed and defending champion Baldwinsville, only to get knocked over by a first-half scoring barrage in a 5-1 defeat.
Having only lost to the Bees by 1-0 and 2-0 margins in the regular seasons, the no. 4 seed Wildcats had some hope of making things stressful, but that quickly got erased.
Just 5:25 into the game, Brennan Walsh scored to give B’ville a 1-0 edge. Walsh then made it 2-0 seven minutes later, and before the half-hour mark, Evan Smith and Tyler Johnson had found the net to double the Bees’ margin.
To its credit, WG did play the rest of the game on more even terms, and with 8:25 left, Jack Dalgety did notch a goal, assisted by Nick Femano. Between them, goalies Josh Ferrell and Alex Toumbacaris had nine saves.
Then there was Class C, where Bishop Ludden saw its quest to give retiring head coach Oscar Vergara one more championship get thwarted by rival Bishop Grimes in a 3-0 defeat at Vernon-Verona-Sherrill’s Sheveron Field.
Plenty of emotions stirred as this game got underway. Part of it was the rivalry between Ludden and Grimes, who had each won two early-round sectional games – the the Gaelic Knights over LaFayette and Waterville, the Cobras over Otselic Valley and Thousand Islands.
Most of it, though, stemmed from trying to win one for Vergara, who had coached more than 40 years in Central New York (34 of them at Ludden), winning more than 500 matches and earning all kinds of respect and accolades for his leadership and character.
Having split two regular-season meetings, Ludden,t he no. 3 seed, and Grimes, the no. 2 seed, battled through a scoreless first half, each side probing and waiting for the other to crack.
Then, after intermission, the Cobras’ star trio of Byam Mugushu, Deng Mawien and Jack Gutchess took over, each of them putting shots in the net as Mawien also earned an assist.
