(July 21, 2025) -- The first indication that something special was happening at Ward Melville in the 2024-25 school year came when what has become "the usual" happened one late-November day.
It took fifth-year varsity goalkeeper Kate Ronzoni stopping an Arlington penalty kick in the final two minutes in Cortland, but the Patriots captured the NYSPHSAA Class AAA championship with a 1-0 victory.
The title was the third in a row for Ward Melville, and the outcome extended the squad's remarkable unbeaten streak to 63 games (56 of them victories), a Long Island record, in that span.
Four other Patriots fall squads registered success that translated into points in the New York State Sportswriters Association's All-Sport Championship, and then the school's second cheerleading title of the year in the winter wrapped up the overall Kerr Cup crown.
The competition is named in honor of Neil Kerr, the former Syracuse Post-Standard sportswriter who was the driving force behind the NYSSWA for more than half a century.
It is Ward Melville's first Kerr Cup crown and comes on the heels of a fifth-place showing in 2024.
Ward Melville finished with 64 points to hold off Pittsford Mendon (59.83), Garden City (53), Cold Spring Harbor (50.5) and Maine-Endwell (49) in the NYSSWA's annual competition for New York State Public High School Athletic Association schools. Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake, Scarsdale, North Rockland, Penfield, and two-time defending champion Fairport rounded out the top 10.
Thirty of the champions' points came from the Gameday and Competitive Cheerleading squads coached by Georgia Curtis.
Ward Melville competes in Class AAA. The overall champions in the other classifications:
•Class AA: Pittsford Mendon
•Class A: Maine-Endwell
•Class B: Cold Spring Harbor
•Class C: Tuckahoe
•Class D: Panama
The jury is still out on six classes
The COVID pandemic created a disruption in the Kerr Cup. When we got back on track by compiling results for the 2023-24 school year, Fairport scored an unprecedented 31-point victory in the overall scoring.
It was our first year of compiling results since the NYSPHSAA allowed many sports to expanded to six classes, and it raised the possibility that large schools from sections with few schools in Class AAA might be benefiting from easier paths into state tournament quarterfinals, where teams begin accumulating Kerr Cup points.
Given this year's results, particularly with Ward Melville emerging from a crowded Class AAA field in Section 11, maybe Fairport was just that darn good last year.
We'll continue to monitor the potential issue going forward, but there is no need for now to start exploring potential changes to scoring.
A quirky situation in Class D
Before this year, our tabulations began with a simple rule: Schools were placed in their Kerr Cup classes based on where their BEDS numbers would have placed them in boys basketball.
We never differentiated between boys and girls basketball because there didn't seem to be a need. But in looking at the cutoffs from this year ahead of compiling our data (which
