The Cicero-North Syracuse field hockey team is heading back to the Class A sectional championship game with a chance to repeat after defeating Baldwinsville, 3-0, in Tuesday's semifinal.
Complete Box Score »
"We've been fighting all year," C-NS coach Pat Kennedy said. "It's hard to go back to back, being the No. 1 seed and trying to repeat. Usually when a team wins a sectional or goes far, a lot of times there's a drop off the next year. This team's been working really hard to try to repeat."
This will be the Northstars' third straight trip to the sectional championship game, and second straight against Rome Free Academy, which defeated Liverpool in Tuesday's other Class A semifinal.
>> Rome Free Academy field hockey edges Liverpool, sets up Class A title rematch with Cicero-North Syracuse
Last year, C-NS defeated the Black Knights 3-2 in the championship game. This year, the Northstars won their only regular-season matchup against RFA, 2-0.
"The experience of playing them, that obviously helps," Kennedy said. "They're so well coached over there and they got great field hockey players. They're a totally different team than they were at the beginning of the year. And, I think we're definitely a different team as well. So I think it's going to be a very interesting matchup. It should be a good one."
In Tuesday's semifinal, C-NS did all of its scoring against Baldwinsville in the first half. Junior Paige Pangaro, seventh-grader Isabel Normanly and senior Gabby Wameling all scored a goal for the Northstars.
C-NS (14-3) reached the semifinals with a quarterfinal-round bye. Baldwinsville (7-11) defeated No. 4 Fayetteville-Malius, 3-0, in last Wednesday's quarterfinal.
The Northstars will look to repeat last year's results in the championship when they face RFA at 5 p.m. Sunday but Kennedy is not expecting the Black Knights to just hand his team the game.
"We're taking nothing for granted, just because we beat them once," he said. "It means nothing to us. We have to be better than them on that given day."
