BALDWINSVILLE – For more than 10 months, the Cicero-North Syracuse field hockey team had devoted most of its work to erasing the gap between itself and Baldwinsville that was present at the end of last fall’s Section III Class A championship game.
And it took two whole minutes to show how the work was paying off.
The Northstars struck early, then struck again and again in Tuesday night’s showdown at Pelcher-Arcaro Stadium, not letting up until it had put away the Bees in a 6-1 romp.
Both teams arrived at this game off to 4-0 starts, B’ville having given up just one goal to Holland Patent in its Sept. 2 opener, while C-NS had surrendered three goals, two of them in a tough 3-2 win over HP before it faced the Bees.
Yet any concerns were quickly erased when the Northstars, quick out of the gate, forced two penalty corners and, on the second of them, Chrissy Wagner scored off a feed from Gabby Wameling.
B’ville played better the rest of the first quarter, but early in the second C-NS again attacked hard and, taking advantage of a fast break, doubled the margin to 2-0 as Wagner got her second goal, this time assisted by Eva Farone.
Any doubts were erased during a 36-second stretch of the third quarter. Here, Shannon Brown would find the net and, attacking immediately after the goal, Brown converted a second time.
Down 4-0, the Bees used a time-out and did break up the shutout with Julia Schultz’s goal late in the third quarter. But Nicole Conklin converted a penalty corner with 10:46 left and Wagner returned to complete her hat trick in the closing minutes.
