East Syracuse, N.Y. — Cicero-North Syracuse boys volleyball coach Mike Lucia has led the program for 26 years and he says this year's team showed a level of "dedication and commitment" to one another that he has never seen before.
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That dedication and commitment helped lead the second-seeded Northstars to a 3-0 win over No. 1 Fayetteville-Manlius in Saturday's Section III Division I finals at East Syracuse Minoa High School.
"I could not be more proud of them," Lucia said. "Coming in at 13-6, you would certainly think that it might not be our day, or maybe we're not the favorite and they beat us twice. But I've just never seen a group love each other so much and come together for the championship."
Last season, C-NS defeated F-M twice in the regular season before the Hornets got their revenge in the championship game.
This season, the roles were reversed.
F-M handed C-NS 3-0 and 3-1 losses in the regular season, but the Northstars used that as motivation to win a title this time around.
C-NS may have been the underdog on paper, but that was not the case on the court in the championship match.
The Northstars put the Hornets on notice by taking the first set 25-20.
"We couldn't go down 0-1 after losing last year," C-NS' Carter King said. "We had a really good team last year, but we just fell short of it. With that first win, we knew we'd just keep piling on."
In the second set, the Hornets showed why they entered the postseason as Division I's No. 1 seed. F-M led by as many as five points at one point in the second set.
While the Hornets did their best to assert their dominance, the Northstars would not go away.
"I think that after the first set, we knew that they were going to come back strong," Lucia said. "They're the (defending) champions for a reason."
C-NS hung around and ended up winning the second set 25-23 to take a 2-0 lead in the match.
In the third set, the Hornets once again managed to lead by as many as five points, but the Northstars erased the lead.
"We knew that we had this game," King said. "We had to earn this one, and as soon as we went down five points, we said, 'All right, listen, we practice this all the time. Come back, we got this.'"
The teams battled to a 24-24 tie before C-NS scored two straight points to win the set, 26-24, and claim the title.
"Two weeks ago we lost three matches in a row," Lucia said. "So for us to come back even after that, it's not a surprise to me that they came back (in the last two sets) because two weeks ago we went 0-3. So to come back throughout the course of the week and now get it here, that's actually not surprising to me."
F-M finishes the season 15-3 with the loss.
King led the Northstars with 19 kills in the win. Jack Waite added 35 assists and eight digs for C-NS.
The Nothstars (14-6) will play next Saturday at Liverpool High School against the winner of the match between the Section I and II champions in the regional round of state playoffs.
