Thursday, May 11, 2017: NYSSWA girls basketball all-state team

   Leading off today: A pair of Section 4 stars who helped their teams to NYSPHSAA championships are among seven athletes recognized as players of the year on the New York State Sportswriters Associations girls basketball all-star team announced Thursday.

   Lexi Levy, a George Washington University-bound senior, was selected the player of the year in Class B after averaging 18.8 points and 4.2 assists for Class B champion Binghamton Seton Catholic, which rattled off 26 consecutive victories and capped its season with a Federation crown.

   Amanda Pike, who scored five of Watkins Glen's final seven points in a 65-63 thriller over Port Jefferson in the state finals, was selected the Class C player of the year. Pike averaged 17.4 points and 4.5 rebounds in her senior season.

   Class D honors went to Heuvelton senior Paige McCormick, completing her hat trick in the sport. The UMass signee, who led Heuvelton to its third straight New York State Public High School Athletic Association championship, finished her career with 2,452 points.

   The NYSSWA selected co-recipients in the two large school classes.

   In Class AA, the selections were a pair of stars headed to two of the elite NCAA Division I programs: Ossining forward Andra Espinoza-Hunter (UConn) and Mary Louis Academy forward Danielle Patterson (Notre Dame).

   In Class A, Jamesville-DeWitt guard Meg Hair shared the top honor for the second year in a row, this time with Clare Mitchell of Federation champion Staten Island Academy. Hair is the only junior among the seven players of the year.

   The full all-state teams for Classes AA and A are posted here. The selections in Classes B, C and D can be viewed here.

   A nice round number: Anthony Hernandez registered career hit No. 100 for Maryvale in a 4-1 baseball victory vs. Depew on Wednesday.

   Season cut short: The Indian River boys lacrosse has forfeited the final four games of its season, the Frontier League confirmed to The Daily Times.

   Indian River AD Jay Brown could not be reached for comment, the paper reported.

   The team's 1-10 season ended May 2 with a 12-5 loss to Lowville. Indian River missed games last week against Watertown and Clinton as well as Monday's game vs. Carthage. Thursday's scheduled game against Watertown IHC would have completed the regular season.

   On the move: Holy Trinity's Bob Malandro, 70, who's booked 425 baseball wins and five CHSAA titles in 30 seasons, coached his final home game Wednesday in Hicksville. To honor the retiring mentor, all of the Titans wore No. 12.    Holy Trinity defeated Chaminade 4-2.

   The gifts Malandro received before the game included a montage of him surrounded by all 30 team photos, a No. 12 jersey, and a replica of a ring that is being custom-made.

    • Jeff Swick, who guided North Rockland to back-to-back Section 1 wrestling titles in 2013 and '14, is stepping down. With a 9-year-old daughter and a 5-year-old son, Swick is looking to spend more time with his family, The Journal News reported.

   Swick took over as head coach in 2012 after six years at the middle-school level and then six with the JVs.

   Swick said he won't walk away completely and plans to remain involved, especially while the next coach gets settled.

   Stupid Human Tricks: David Letterman had his Stupid Pet Tricks, which were mind-numbing intellectually speaking but at least somewhat amusing. The Internet has its Stupid Human Tricks in the form of dubious lists that are little more than click bait.

   The latest such endeavor is the purported "2017 Best High Schools for Athletes in New York" by Niche.com. (An aside: I went back and forth for much of the day in debating whether to link to the source of the list or even acknowledge it. In the end I decided it should be up to you and not me to decide whether you want to take a look.)

   The site says it created its rankings -- which includes only public schools -- based in part upon the number of sports offered, the amount spent by the district per student and participation rates. Half the total score comes from survey results "self-reported by Niche users," a dubious methodology that renders the rankings more than just somewhat questionable. As I texted to a friend, all it would take is a few kids in fifth-period study hall to skew the results.

   I'll leave names out of it to spare myself a pile of nasty emails questioning whether there were any marriages in my family in the three generations preceding my birth, but I will say this: I can say with a great deal of confidence that at least five of the 100 schools on the list probably couldn't make it into the top half of all the state's schools in a more credible compilation (i.e., penalizing programs in which parents are allowed to behave like something approximating terrorist organizations or coaches routinely come and go). Also, I didn't have to count very far backwards from No. 100 to find five exceptional schools that got shortchanged by at least 50 spots.

   If you enjoy click bait, then go look for yourself. But that'll just encourage them to do more of this, uh, stuff.