The 2016-17 New York high schools year in review, Page 11

[From Page 10]

    • In February, Section 3 announced the launch of an eight-man football league that will begin this fall with squads from Bishop Grimes, South Lewis, New York Mills and Cooperstown. The National Football Foundation league for small schools with struggling programs will not return for a fourth season.

    • Elsewhere in Section 3, the 16-team Salt City Athletic Conference will take the place of the Central New York Counties League and pull in larger members of the Onondaga High School League's Freedom Conference beginning in the fall. The league will consist of the section's 16 largest schools and no private or charter schools.

Deaths

   The scholastic sports world lost a number of prominent figures in 2016-17, beginning with the shocking death of Lansing athletic director and coach Adam Heck, 42, while on a trip to the Capital Region with his boys soccer team in late August.    Heck, who was also the school's dean of students, was just starting his 21st season as the head soccer coach and had guided Lansing to the NYSPHSAA final four in four straight years from 2012-15.    The squad regrouped after the tragedy to reach the semifinals of the state tournament.

    • Eastchester baseball coach Dom Cecere, who racked up more than 700 career victories since taking over the program in 1964, died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 75 just before the start of the season.

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    • Losses in the track and field world included Dr. Norbert Sander, who won the 1974 New York City Marathon and went on to transform a dilapidated Manhattan facility into "The Armory" -- a jewel worthy of hosting the Millrose Games, and Larry Byrne, the track and field historian whose "Blue Book" has long been the definitive guide to New York high school records in the sport.

    • Sister Maria Pares, small in stature but a giant in leading the growth of female athletics in Western New York and beyond, died from cancer complications at the age of 75. Pares built a girls basketball dynasty at Sacred Heart Academy in the 1980s while simultaneously coaching at Canisius College, and she never lost two games in a row until 1986, when she left to coach Division I Marquette University.

    • Joe Grasso, the only varsity football coach Bishop Maginn ever knew and an assistant at Albany CBA last fall, died of a heart attack. Grasso coached Vincentian Institute

in its final two years and then moved over to Maginn from 1977 to 2015. He led Maginn to a record of 204-169-6, keeping the program viable against large-school competition in Section 2 even as enrollment dwindled since the turn of the century.

    • In a case that attracted national attention, promising Mount Vernon girls JV basketball player Shamoya McKenzie, died in a New Year's Eve shooting incident. McKenzie, 13, was struck in the head by a stray bullet after being caught in crossfire while in a moving car.

The police blotter

   James "Fly" Williams, a New York City basketball legend from the 1970s, was arrested along with a dozen others in a massive heroin ring, Brooklyn authorities announced in May.

   Williams, 65, was selected NYSSWA all-state in 1972 out of Glen Springs Academy and was a standout for Austin Peay before a brief stint in the pros.

    • Indian River varsity baseball coach Lloyd Kevin Smith was arrested in April after his demonstration of a mixed martial arts maneuver on a student caused the boy to lose consciousness, area media reported.

   Police said Smith was performing a demonstration on a 16-year-old male student at school when the choke-hold type maneuver caused the boy to become unconscious. The teen reportedly fell to the ground and struck his head on a door.

   A Jefferson County grand jury has declined to issue felony charges but determined that there was sufficient evidence to support two misdemeanor child endangerment charges.