Friday, Sept. 25, 2015: Glens Falls hangs onto boys basketball tourney

   Leading off today: Glens Falls has fought off challenges from Albany and Binghamton and is expected to be confirmed next month to continue hosting the NYSPHSAA boys basketball final fours through 2019.

   The New York State Public High School Athletic Association staff and its boys basketball committee voted Friday to stay at the Glens Falls Civic Center after also hearing presentations from representatives of arenas in Albany and Binghamton. It's all but certain that the NYSPHSAA Executive Committee will ratify their decision at its Oct. 22 meeting.

   Glens Falls, which has hosted the boys final fours since 1981, faced no competing bids when the most recent three-year contract came up for bids in 2013. Albany wrestled the Federation basketball tournament away from Glens Falls after the 2010 event.

   With Section 2 schools winning three of the five championships in each of the past three years, Glens Falls has been riding momentum in the host role. The 2015 NYSPHSAA tournament attracted 17,993 fans over three days and netted a profit of $160,400.

   The girls tournament was also up for bids this summer but is safely entrenched at Hudson Valley Community College in Troy since no competing bids were submitted by the deadline last month. The girls committee meets next week.

   The girls have played at Hudson Valley CC since leaving Queensbury High in 1995.

   Girls soccer: Alex McNicholas scored the goal on a free kick with 6:11 remaining as Rockville Centre South Side defeated two-time defending state champion Massapequa 1-0. Kayla Klarides made nine saves for the shutout.

   Massapequa is ranked No. 1 in the state in Class AA. South Side is ranked eighth in Class A.

   Massapequa had scored 19 goals in five games but was stymied by South Side.

   "Well, I think their goalie stood on her head. She was phenomenal," Massapequa coach Bruce Stegner told Newsday. "She was in great position every time. She didn't drop one ball."

   In a noteworthy Class D clash, Lexi DuBois scored in each half and No. 3 South Kortright shut down No. 17 Downsville all-time leading scorer Kaileen Townsend in a 2-0 victory.

   Townsend was coming off of a four-goal effort in a 5-0 win over Gilboa that gave her a school-record 109 career goals.

   Indian River follow-up: The status of five Indian River football players remains unclear following a school board meeting Thursday. School officials confirmed on Sept. 17 that five players, including four starters, were suspended for an unspecified violation of team rules but they did not disclose the length of those suspensions or what led to the punishment.

   Thursday's meeting did not shed additional light, and school board members went into executive session at the end of the meeting, The Daily Times reported.

   AD Jay Brown told the paper the school's discipline called for an eight-day suspension from athletic activities, but the athletic handbook allows each team to set its own code of conduct that can supersede the school rule and dish out harsher punishment.

   The defending NYSPHSAA Class A champions, ranked second in the state at the time, lost to Carthage 14-13 last weekend without the suspended players. Indian River plays at Whitesboro on Friday.

   Syracuse school mourns: Nottingham senior Ke'Ara Rowser, 17, died of a brief illness Sept. 18 at Golisano Children's Hospital after being admitted several days earlier, Syracuse.com reported.

   "It's such an unexpected loss for our Nottingham family," girls basketball coach Randy Wright said of a player he expected to be a team captain and one of his top scorers this winter.

RoadToSyracuse.com football site

   Rowser missed last season with an ACL injury.

   "She worked hard -- just an all-around great kid," Wright said.

   He's right: Pete Tobey of The Post-Star had a strong, accurate take on the controversy at Guilderland that I noted in a previous blog, namely the decision by the school board to reverse itself and not name the football field in honor of retired coach Harold "Bud" Kenyon. The decision was made after two nearly ancient complaints against Kenyon of physical confrontations resurfaced.

   "This whole situation reeks of someone with a very, very old axe to grind against a coach. Seriously? Forty years?" Tobey wrote. "Dredging up a couple of incidents from 40 years ago is apparently enough to deny naming a field after someone. Yes, he was reprimanded for one incident, but he also coached and taught in an era when discipline was more physical. I had an English teacher in junior high who winged chalkboard erasers across the room at students who weren't paying attention. My sixth-grade teacher had a 'board of education' in his room that he actually used on misbehaving students. ... We all survived."

   Despite the best efforts of a few classmates I expect to see at our 35th reunion this weekend, discipline was a cornerstone of my old high school, but so too was the appropriate application of "situational ethics."

   The principal who threw scrawny freshmen into walls for incorrect answers in a math class he really had no business teaching while trying to run a school? He was a bully, not an educator. I wouldn't name anything after him except maybe a disease.

   The 5-foot-8, 135-pound Latin and Spanish teacher who struck fear in all of us by dispensing the same physical punishment for failing to turn in completed homework? He was a genuine teacher and in retrospect someone to be respected and thanked a few years down the road.

   The folks at Guilderland needed to make a similar distinction. If they'd put real thought into their decision rather than just act upon complaints that were resolved in 1975, Bud Kenyon would be receiving some deserved recognition this weekend.