For a week and a half, the Liverpool football team was on COVID-19 pause, missing out on two games that would have served as the springboard to the moment for which it had waited for 18 months.
Every single Warriors player remaining from 2019 remembered how Cicero-North Syracuse rallied from a 28-7 deficit to beat them in the Section III Class AA semifinal and then went on a third straight sectional championship.
So their reunion at Bragman Stadium with the “Star Wars Cup” is a big deal regardless of any circumstances. It’s just that Liverpool will have played just two games, one of them earlier in the week less than 48 hours after resuming practices.
At Bragman Stadium last Friday night against Nottingham, C-NS would, for the third consecutive week, not allow a point on the defensive side while producing plenty of points on its own in a 48-0 victory over the Bulldogs.
Three first-quarter possessions led to three Northstars touchdowns. J.J. Razmovski scrambled four yards for one score and threw scoring passes of 30 yards to Mason Ellis and 12 yards to Vinny Latanzio.
Razmovski found Ellis again on an 18-yard scoring pass with 7:23 left in the half, but C-NS did not let up, twice more finding the end zone in the last 61 seconds of the half.
Right after LaQuan Lemon dashed 15 yards for a TD, the Northstars got the ball back and midfield and Razmovski went deep, finding Matt Klamm (who is going to Cortland State for football next fall) on a 51-yard scoring pass.
Once again, all the starters got to rest for most of the second half, but C-NS added one more touchdown when Anthony Testa scored on a four-yard run.
Liverpool, who was on pause since getting its own shutout over Nottingham (26-0 on March 20), went back to practice on Saturday, and on Monday would make up the game with Corcoran that was supposed to take place last weekend, taking on the Cougars just four days before it went out to confront the Northstars.