Major high school basketball coaching news in the last couple of weeks had close connections to the Cicero-North Syracuse and Liverpool programs, involving an historic arrival and an important departure.
Beth Bonin, a C-NS alum, was chosen as the boys basketball varsity head coach at Central Square, while Ryan Blackwell, who has coached the Liverpool program the last nine years, is leaving to join Gerry McNamara’s staff as an assistant coach at Siena College in Albany.
Bonin’s hire makes her the first woman on record to coach Section III boys varsity basketball, even though women have often served as coaches of boys teams in other sports through the years.
Still, Bonin has the first-hand experience of contributing to championship teams, having done so at C-NS in basketball (two sectional Class AA titles) and helping the softball Northstars win the state Class AA championship in 2016, her senior year.
After a decorated college basketball career that started at Queens College and continued at SUNY Cortland, Bonin returned to C-NS in 2020, where boys basketball varsity coach Kyle Martin hired her as an assistant coach.
In three years, Bonin helped the Northstars go 38-18. Then, for the 2023-24 school year, she went to Dryden High School where she coached girls basketball for one season, leading to her hire at Central Square, which was 1-19 last winter after coach Jay Adams left just before the season, having guided the Redhawks to the 2022 sectional Class A final.
When Bonin was coaching at C-NS, the team that stood in the way of a title was not far away, at Liverpool, led by Blackwell, who came to the Warriors in 2015 well-known in local circles for his four years at Syracuse University from 1996 to 2000, where he led the Orange to three NCAA tournament appearances and two trips to the Sweet 16.
Taking over a program which had drifted from its past glory, Blackwell brought Liverpool to new heights in just three years. In 2017-18, led by future Bryant and St. Bonaventure standout Charles Pride, the Warriors made an undefeated (26-0) run all the way to its first-ever state championship when it won the Class AA title over Half Hollow Hills East 71-65 in Binghamton.
Another era of success began in 2021-22, when the state tournament resumed after two years of COVID-19 related cancellations. Liverpool won back-to-back sectional Class AA championships, each time beating West Genesee in the title game, and reached the state final four in Glens Falls in 2023.
Then, even after the departure of its top three scorers (two of which went to prep schools), Liverpool still claimed the first-ever sectional Class AAA championship in March – beating C-NS in the finals. Ultimately, the Warriors went 21-3, falling in the regional final to eventual state champion Albany Green Tech.
Now Blackwell heads to the Albany area, joining McNamara, who was associate head coach at SU before taking the Siena job in March.
