CENTRAL NEW YORK – With a strong recent run of play and high-quality victories, the Westhill girls soccer team climbed all the way up to no. 10 in the last state Class B rankings of the regular season.
Now poised to try and dethrone Skaneateles as Section III champions, the Warriors could not run past the games leading up to the sectional tournament.
For example, in last Tuesday’s game against Homer, Westhill turned to the likes of Elle Herrera to break through against the Trojans and record a 3-1 victory.
Twice, Herrera was able to put shots past Homer goalie Alex Kellaway, who still had 15 saves. Hannah Goodness earned the other goal, with Lily Kinsella and Molly Dorfman both getting assists.
When it faced Liverpool in Thursday’s regular-season finale, Westhill was able to pull out this clash of Warriors sides by a 2-1 margin.
Herrera and Goodness put in Westhill’s goals, with Kara Rosenberger (whose OT goal beat Skaneateles) adding an assist. Mya Wright scored for Liverpool, but Kate Bendall and Lizzie Horner, with seven saves between them, kept everything else out.
This happened as Skaneateles was able to secure the OHSL Liberty Division 2 regular-season title, doing so in a tough game last Thursday at Hannibal where the Lakers edged that other group of Warriors 1-0.
At 11-3, Hannibal (who had combined its team with Cato-Meridian) was one of the season’s biggest surprises, but the Lakers attacked hard from the outset, forcing Warriors goalie Sophia Salladin to make a series of stops.
Only in the last minutes of the half did Sknaeateles break through thanks to Paige Willard’s goal, assisted by Maddy Ramsgard, and Palladin turned everything else back, finishing with 16 saves.
It was in doubt all the way to the end, and the Lakers got fortunate when a possible tying goal from Hannibal clanged off the post with three minutes left, the last of many different occasions where both teams found the post.
Marcellus was playing well late in the season before it hosted Cazenovia last Tuesday night and took a 2-1 defeat to the Lakers.
Neither side scored until the 52nd minute, when Cazenovia’s Katie Rajkowski sent a long shot past JoJo Leubner. The Lakers then made it 2-0 when Ella Baker took advantage of a misplay on a corner kick to convert.
Battling to the end, the Mustangs cut it to one on Janie Powell’s goal with 1:35 left, but it proved too late. Leubner finished with eight saves as Marcellus saw six of seven shots stopped by Skye Stanford.
Bouncing back, Marcellus blanked Christian Brothers Academy 3-0 in Thursday night’s regular-season finale, with all of the damage done in the second half.
Within less than a minute of reach other, Lexie Fragnito managed to score twice, augmenting an effort where she, along with Jadyn Baker and Clare Card, continually put passes into good positions for the forwards. Corinne Aldrich added a third goal off a corner kick with 12 minutes left.
So now came the sectional playoffs where Westhill landed as the top seed, the reward a first-round game with no. 16 Clinton on Tuesday as Skaneateles, the no. 4 seed, hosts no. 13 seed General Brown and Marcellus, with its no. 11 seed, would try to get even with no. 6 seed Cazenovia.
