Tuesday, July 4, 2017: Grimes star Wade may miss senior season

   Leading off today: All-state selection Azariah Wade may lose her entire senior season to a knee injury suffered last week, Syracuse.com reported.

   Wade, a forward selected third-team all-state in Class B as a Bishop Grimes junior, tore the anterior cruciate ligament in her left knee during Central New York tryouts for the BCANY Summer Hoops Festival on Wednesday. The website reported she is awaiting surgery.

   A day after the injury, Wade made a verbal commitment to the University of Hartford, which plays in the America East Conference. She had multiple offers, including Providence, St. Bonaventure and Maryland-Baltimore County.

   Wade said her plan last week was to pick a college a day after the tryouts. The injury left her fearful that coaches would back away.

   "I wasn't worried about my health. But will the college still want me?" she said. "This is what I've worked so hard for. I didn't want to lose any opportunity over my injury."

   Wade said Hartford coach Kim McNeill told her the offer was good and she still wanted the 6-foot-1 standout, who played part of last season with a broken nose but averaged 19.2 points a game and showed herself as an adept passer for the Section 3 finalists.

   Wade's surgery will take place after swelling subsides. Her doctor warned her that a return to the court next season is improbable. At best, she'd be able to return late in the season.

   Progress update: The majority of reference files on NewYorkSportswriters.org will have undergone their annual update by this evening (because I know how to have a wild and crazy 4th of July).

   Though 2017 schedules were added last week, the annual overhaul of the reference material on our RoadToSyracuse.com football site will take place later this summer, but I did want to call attention to two files uploaded today:

• Returning NYSSWA all-state players from 2016 (.docx file)
• Breakdown of 2017 classes for teams (PDF)

   The list of returning all-staters includes Glenmour Osbourne, who led Section 1 in rushing in the regular season at White Plains last year and has moved to Class B Ardsley ahead of the upcoming season.

   Given his 2016 resume -- 1,831 rushing yards and 22 touchdowns -- last fall, he could do a lot of damage in the Ardsley backfield behind star QB Julian McGarvey.

   "Workouts have been great," Osbourne told News 12 Varsity. "There has been a camp and it went really well. I fit the offense and a lot of speed and power to it, which makes it a win-win."

   By the way, Ardsley faces its toughest test in Week 1 against defending Section 1 Class B champion Pleasantville on Sept. 2.

    • For what it's worth, we're aware of two other likely transfers not reflected in the list of returning all-state players. We'll hold off on reporting those until I can pin down confirmations.

   Recovering: Tom Vasey, coach of Our Lady of Mercy's powerful Section 5 basketball team, is recovering after suffering a massive heart attack -- the so-called "widow maker" -- on June 4, the Democrat and Chronicle reported.

   The episode occurred while Vasey, 45, was being examined at Rochester General Hospital after going in because he thought he was having a reaction to a new medication he started taking two days prior.

   Vasey's left anterior descending artery, the one that supplies the most blood to the heart, had become 100 percent blocked. Doctors needed to use CPR and a defibrillator four times to save his life.

NYSPHSAA boys lacrosse brackets 2017 statewide boys lacrosse playoff summary NYSPHSAA girls lacrosse brackets NYSPHSAA baseball brackets NYSPHSAA softball brackets Past years' brackets

   "The way one doctor explained," said Vasey's wife, Molly, "was that basically if this happened anywhere else but in an emergency department where you're in a bed with a cardiologist in the room, you're done."

   Vasey, the eighth-year Mercy coach whose team has won two straight Section 5 championships and last March lost to Ossining in the NYSPHSAA Class AA semifinals, has since recovered quickly and expects to return to work this month.

   Save for future reference: The Daily Gazette wrote recently about changes on the local Spectrum Cable system (former Time Warner Cable before a merger with Charter Communications) that appear likely to also be applied to other Spectrum systems across the state. I've heard that similar changes are on the horizon in Rochester, with some original programming slated to end this summer.

   According to the Schenectady paper, Charter recently shut down Spectrum Sports channels 50/323 and 324 on the system. The new home for the high school football broadcasts will be on Spectrum News, the 24-hour news channel. Besides football, the old Time Warner Cable Sports Channel carried NYSPHSAA soccer, basketball, wrestling and hockey championships among other sports. College contests, including Syracuse men's basketball, were also a staple.

   "We will leverage the power of our upstate New York Spectrum News channels by scheduling marquee football games on the networks on Friday nights throughout the season. We will also elevate the depth and breadth of our local sports news coverage,: a Charter spokesperson said in a statement.

   The statement also indicated some local sports programming would be migrated to an "authenticated digital platform available exclusively to Spectrum subscribers."

   That sounds as though it may take the form of a mobile app for phones and tablet devices, which will somewhat narrow availability overall but make it easier to access away from home.

   If I recall correctly, TWC/Charter/Spectrum took that approach in March, for the first time making NYSPHSAA basketball semifinals available via streaming.