Leading off today: Winning doesn't get old. In fact, it opens the door to plenty that is new.
More than a decade and a half of success at Mount Vernon landed Bob Cimmino one of the nicer perks for a high school coach, as he was put in charge of the East boys team at next week's McDonald's All American Basketball Games in Chicago.
That's not to say that winning doesn't have its associated challenges. This week alone, Cimmino has had to line up a pinch-hitter to run the first McDonald's practice for him because Mount Vernon is playing this weekend in the Federation tournament in Albany.
And speaking of Albany, Cimmino learned today that he doesn't have the kind of clout he had last week during the New York State Public High School Athletic Association championships in Glens Falls.
"Not too happy with the 2 hour wait to get my players into rooms at the Crowne," Cimmino tweeted this afternoon. "Got no juice here. Not like the Queensbury. Oh well."
It's vintage Cimmino, just like his team is vintage Mount Vernon. The Knights set the NYSPHSAA record last weekend by securing the ninth boys basketball championship in school history, breaking a tie with Bridgehampton.
Minutes after the historic victory at the Glens Fall Civic Center over Jamestown, the coach was already being hit with questions about Boys & Girls, the Knights' opponent in the Federation Semifinals at Times Union Center on Saturday.
"Is that who we're playing?" he asked with a sly smile.
It was his way of saying he wanted to savor the latest addition to the trophy case before even thinking about prepping for the next game, and he was certainly entitled. Basketball can be a consuming job -- some would say suffocating -- at the highest level, and that's especially true in a community too big to be regarded as a town but too small to have much more than the basketball team to fixate on for entertainment from Thanksgiving to Easter.
"I think that the basketball program is held in high esteem, the shining star in the city -- as evident by we have our superintendent here, our principal here and our mayor here," Cimmino said Sunday in Glens Falls. "Our fellas know they carry the burden to be good citizens. Take hard work combined with good citizens and you have a positive outcome that is vindication of how hard they work."
It is. Mount Vernon has won six straight Section 1 Class AA championships and an outlandish 11 of the last 12. The Knights are rich in heritage, having sent the likes of Scooter and Rodney McCray and Ben Gordon into big-time college basketball and then the pros. The latest in the long line is guard Jabarie Hinds, a West Virginia recruit and co-winner of the New York Mr. Basketball Award.
Those are the dynamic, larger-than-life figures that sustain the program.
"Every youngster wants to be a Knight some day," Cimmino said. "I said before the game, 'Think about your first experience of coming to watch a Mount Vernon
