Monday, Sept. 19, 2016: Lake Shore senior would be BMOC on any campus

   Leading off today: I think others may have done the story previously, but MaxPreps checked in with a weekend feature on the state's biggest football player.

   Brave Williams is a 7-foot-1, 400-pound senior who plays for Lake Shore in Section 6.

   "I've been bigger than everybody my entire life," Williams said. "In kindergarten, I was already 5-3 and towered over everyone."

   Williams started playing football just three years ago and has been on the varsity squad for two seasons, so he's regarded as a bit of a project as a potential college recruit and has not attracted any offers yet. Still, it's hard to ignore a guy who's done 20 reps of 200 pounds in the bench press.

   "I'd like to lose some fat and gain more muscle," he said.

   You can read the rest of the feature here.

   Saratoga mourns: Former Saratoga varsity wrestling coach Anthony Bellai, himself a former state champion, died suddenly over the weekend at the age of 51.

   Bellai, who taught physical education, coached the Blue Streaks varsity for 10 years and then stepped down to watch his children compete at Schalmont. He returned to the mats and coached the Saratoga modified wrestling program through last season.

   "He was one of the main reasons I was a sectional champ," Kris West told The Saratogian. "I had an opportunity to wrestle for him, a chance to coach with him for the last 15 years. I was pretty lucky."

   Bellai, who was coaching modified cross country this fall, was a state champion at 105 pounds for Mont Pleasant in 1982.

   Sunday football: Josh Laurie had a big stats day for LeRoy on Sunday in a 52-7 win over Wellsville that was postponed by lightning the previous evening.

   The senior quarterback was 7-for-13 for 148 yards and a TD and carried seven times for 96 yards and two more scored. He also returned a blocked field goal attempt 75 yards for a touchdown and made two interceptions on defense.

   Football notes: Great Neck South, which dropped its opener to Jericho 22-0 in Week 2, forfeited to Great Neck North over the weekend and has dropped the sport for the remainder of the 2016 season.

    • Junior Helen Mooney, already a soccer and basketball player of some note at Cambridge, has added place-kicking responsibilities to her resume. She was 9-for-9 on extra points Saturday in a 63-6 victory against Warrensburg.

    • Saugerties has rushed for 1,254 in three games, an average of 418 per game.

    • Elmont QB Aaron Ruthman threw for 316 yards for the second consecutive week. He was 19-for-30 with six TDs to beat Carey 48-34.

RoadToSyracuse.com football site

    • Here's a look at all of the Week 3 scores as well as how ranked teams fared.

   Care to help? We ended publication of the New York State Sportswriters Association newsletter in the summer of 2012. Most of the membership fee up until then went toward the 46-50 newsletters per year, but what was left after printing and postage helped defray other expenses.

   Now, online ads mostly cover the expense of providing rankings, news and reference material to readers of NewYorkSportswriters.org and its related sites such as RoadToSyracuse.com, which has allowed us to drop the membership fee.

   If you enjoy our content and feel inclined to help, we do maintain a page that allows contributions via PayPal transfers and credit cards and encourage you to check it out.

   Well, that's different: If it hadn't already done so, the whole sit/stand/kneel controversy officially jumped the shark over the weekend with the disclosure that a Florida county school district is requiring students to have written parental permission to kneel during the playing of a national anthem before a school event.

   WFTV-TV in Orlando reported Orange County Public Schools have reportedly studied state law regarding both the national anthem and pledge of allegiance, and determined that they should be treated identically for the purposes of student protocol. According to state law, a student may kneel during the pledge only if they have written permission to do so.