Editor’s Note: After the cancellation of the rest of the high school winter sports state tournaments, we’ll be periodically looking back at the top local teams and athletes from the 2019-20 season. This edition covers Cicero-North Syracuse and Liverpool.
So many of the important parts of the 2019-20 high school winter sports seasons at Cicero-North Syracuse and Liverpool took place far away from either high school campus.
Whether it was entire seasons spent on the road or tournaments in far-flung locales, various groups of Northstars and Warriors learned plenty – and achieved plenty, too.
One side that climbed back to the top of the heap was the C-NS girls basketball team, who after a three-year hiatus reclaimed the Section III Class AA championship.
Having lost the previous two sectional AA finals to West Genesee, the Northstars would undertake a daunting early-season schedule, absorbing defeats to Section II powerhouses Shenendehowa and Averill Park and then, a few weeks later, going 1-3 at a prestigious national tournament in Arizona.
From all of those travails emerged a tougher, deeper and stronger C-NS side that, for the rest of the season, would suffer just one defeat, against Baldwinsville, which it would avenge when it defeated the Bees 52-37 in the March 7 sectional final.
At the heart of it all was junior forward Jessica Cook, who averaged better than 20 points per game despite constant double and triple teams. That included a 38-point, 16-rebound effort against Liverpool on Jan. 3, a 36-point performance against West Genesee on Feb. 11 and 12 fourth-quarter points that put away B’ville in the title game.
It wasn’t a one-player show, though. On offense and defense, players like Mackenzie White, Alexandra Miller, Alita Carey-Santangelo and Julia Rowe all contributed to the team’s 14-1 finish, though the outbreak of COVID-19 kept C-NS from going after a third state title to match the pair it earned in 2011 and ’12.
Another local team that proved even more dominant in 2019-20 was Liverpool’s boys swim team, and it did so having to travel elsewhere to compete since these Warriors, like all of its other winter sports teams, had to make way for the school’s reconstruction project for its gymnasium and other athletic facilities.
The Liverpool swimmers had 11 meets on the road and won them all, including seven wins in a stretch from Jan. 3 to 15. Having swept Salt City Athletic Conference regular-season foes, the Warriors went on to another sweep in February when it repeated as sectional Class A champions and also retained the George Falwell Cup.
Individually, Griffin Merkling led Liverpool, qualifying for every single individual race at the state championships and eventually finishing sixth in the public-school portion of the 200-yard individual medley. The Warriors also finished fifth in NYSPHSAA standings in the 200 freestyle relay, Merkling joined in that race by Brandon Ngyuen, Julien Brownlow and Curtis Merrick.
Meanwhile, another Liverpool team that claimed sectional honors excelled on the wrestling mat.
Led by the Ianno brothers (senior Jeremy and Jacob, juniors Chris and Dom), the Warriors had an undefeated SCAC Metro division mark and, on Feb. 8, pulled away to take the sectional Class AA team title as Jeremy Ianno (at 120 pounds) and Hamier Williams-Borges (at 195 pounds) earned individual titles.
It was also another stellar indoor track season for C-NS and Liverpool, capped by the March 7 state meet on Staten Island where Northstars freshman Kate Putman combined with Lexi Bernard (South Lewis), Camryn Stone (Central Valley Academy) and Angie Mesa (Westhill) to help Section III win the state title in the distance medley relay.
Putman also was eighth in the 1,000-meter run as teammate Hannah Boyle broke the school record in the 600-meter run. For Liverpool, Jenna Schulz was second in the state in the 1,500-meter run as Kali Hayes set a school mark in the 55-meter hurdles and Imahni Sinclair had a top-10 state finish in the weight throw.
On the boys indoor track side, C-NS held off Baldwinsville to claim the sectional Class AA team championship on Feb. 8 at SRC Arena, helped by wins by R.J. Davis (1,000 meters) and Isaiah Wright (long jump).
In ice hockey, C-NS and Liverpool split two regular-season meetings, but it was the Northstars prevailing 4-2 in their sectional Division I playoff clash before it lost in the quarterfinals to eventual champion Syracuse.
And it was an exciting winter in boys basketball for Liverpool, who knocked off reigning state champion West Genesee in December and twice defeated Corcoran, though the Warriors exited the sectional playoffs in a last-second defeat to Utica Proctor and Corcoran went on to earn the sectional championship, its first since 2000.
