Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2014: No decision yet on new Bergtraum coach

   Leading off today: The Murry Bergtraum girls basketball team still does not have a coach following the resignation of Ed Grezinsky, but workouts are underway at the Manhattan PSAL power.

   The Daily News reports Nerva Jean Pierre, who was a boys JV coach at Tilden in the mid-1990s and led the Norman Thomas girls to a 13-1 mark two years ago, is running practices for now and would consider taking the coaching position.

   The job is still listed as open in the Bergtraum office, according to Jean Pierre. Grezinsky disclosed his resignation early this month. His string of 15 straight PSAL championships with Bergtraum ended last season.

   "I volunteered because I didn't want the girls standing around not doing anything," Jean Pierre said. "The girls have really impressed me with their hard work, their commitment."

   Postponed: Due to snow storm south of Buffalo, the Monsignor Martin Association football championship game between Canisius and Bishop Timon-St. Jude has been moved to Monday at All-High Stadium.

   The game had been scheduled for Thursday at Ralph Wilson Stadium.

   Canceled again: With Archbishop Stepinac one win from an appearance in the inaugural state CHSAA football championship game on Thanksgiving weekend, the annual Turkey Bowl game vs. White Plains has been canceled by mutual consent, The Journal News reported.

   It will be the second straight year the teams will play rivalry game, which dates to 1971. They played 42 straight years before the 2013 game was canceled because White Plains qualified for the NYSPHSAA playoffs.

   Following up: One of the former Westchester Community College basketball players whose scholarship was yanked last month at Florida A&M University because of transcript fraud lost an offer at PIU Post in September 2013 over suspicions of irregularities, The Journal News reported.

   Jamell Walker was denied a full scholarship at Division II LIU Post after the university received two "transcripts that didn't match" for his time at another junior college, Bob Cimmino, his coach at Mount Vernon, confirmed to the paper.

   "I said to him (Walker), can you explain the difference?" Cimmino said, referring to the transcripts. "He said he really couldn't."

   Walker, who started on Mount Vernon's 2011 state and Federation championship team, is one of four former WCC players recently booted or suspended from NCAA Division I basketball teams as a result of the transcript scandal, first revealed by The Journal News. WCC canceled its men's basketball season Thursday amid a criminal investigation by the state Office of the Inspector General.

   LIU Post coach Erik Smiles found that Walker's official 2011-12 transcript from Tompkins Cortland Community College didn't match a previously obtained transcript, Cimmino confirmed. The origin of the first transcript is unknown.

   The official transcript was sent to LIU Post after Destination: College, a Bronxville-based nonprofit, paid a

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$5,000 debt Walker owed TCCC, said Nancy McKenna, chairman of the organization's board.

   "If there had been any inkling there were forged transcripts at the front end of this, the money never would have been put up," Destination: College treasurer Rick Rugani said.

   Walker played one semester at TCCC before being ruled academically ineligible The paper reported it's unclear how Walker played at WCC at all in 2012-13 because the college has said he took just one course there.

   Walker could not be reached for comment.

   Fighting back: A California high school coach is suing the father of a former player over the man's "personal vendetta" to get him fired and ruin his reputation, according to the Ventura County Star.

   Rob Bloom, boys basketball coach at Westlake High School, alleges James Clark "was on a personal 'mission' to destroy and defame" him. Bloom is seeking $1 million in the lawsuit.

   Clark demanded the coach and his staff resign or get fired in "vicious" and "ugly" emails to the coach, Conejo Valley Unified School District officials and other parents over the last few years, according to the lawsuit filed in Ventura County Superior Court.

   Clark, whose son played for the team from 2011 to 2013 but did not participate last season, wrote a letter to the editor accusing school coaches of running "fake nonprofit sports camps tied to campus to make significant personal profit while luring incoming athletes to illegally underpaid camp counselor positions."

   The response from James P. Thompson, Bloom's attorney: "This was the tip of the spear of helicopter parenting. There is a vast difference between thinking a coach is doing something wrong and calling a coach a crook and child abuser."