Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017: All the defending boys soccer champs are gone

   Leading off today: Monday was not a good day for defending NYSPHSAA state champions in boys soccer, with three of them crashing out of the Section 1 playoffs.

   New Rochelle (Class AA), Somers (A) and North Salem (C) all suffered loses. The section's fourth reigning champ, Class B Hastings, was eliminated last week.

   Somers, ranked 16th in the state in Class A, had the advantage in play for much of the game and played Nyack to a 1-1 tie in Monday's quarterfinals but fell 5-4 in penalty kicks when Tariku Smith converted his attempt in the fifth round.

   Nyack goalkeeper Sam Beck was credited with 25 saves.

   "I've been playing travel soccer since seventh grade and this season, this team definitely tops it all," Beck told The Journal News. "If you told me that this is what's going to happen, over the summer before the season started if you told me we'd be beating the reigning state champions, I couldn't have believed it, I wouldn't have believed it."

   Horace Greeley played No. 22 New Rochelle to a scoreless tie through 110 minutes and then advanced by a 3-0 margin in penalty kicks, with Ryan Sullivan connecting for the clinching goal.

   Class C saw another scoreless tie, with Bronxville also advancing on PKs.

   We'll have five new champions this fall since Alfred-Almond (D) was eliminated Friday in Section 5 action.

   42 and counting: Sarah Paige scored off a Kayla Bailey corner kick in the first half as Fort Ann edged Germantown 1-0 in a Section 2 Class D girls soccer quarterfinal.

   It was the 42nd goal of the season and 91st in her career for Paige, a sophomore.

   Renee Allen made four saves for the shutout.

   Fort Ann was ranked 12th in the state last week.

   Quite a record: Mike Rescigno has nothing to apologize for as far as his 81 wins go at Yorktown. He's obviously on his way to a much higher total as the head of a football program with some impressive history.

   Still, he's the odd man out when it comes to coaching resumes heading into Friday's Section Class A semifinals in which Yorktown faces Rye and Somers plays Our Lady of Lourdes.

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   As noted Monday by Kevin Devaney Jr. of News 12 Varsity, the four coaches have a combined 973 victories. That's because Tony DeMatteo (Somers) is at 340, Dino Garr (Rye) has 297 and Brian Walsh (Lourdes) has 255.

   Coaching move: Lab Museum girls basketball coach Michael Lloyd has left the school to run the girls program at Brooklyn Law and Tech according to Mike Libert at nychoops.net.

RoadToSyracuse.com football site

   Lloyd's teams were 67-0 in the Manhattan West Class A league in his four seasons after coming over from coaching the boys team at Manhattan Village Academy.

   Law & Tech plays in one of Brooklyn's Class B divisions.

   The club scene: Reporters at The Star Tribune in Minneapolis spent the summer researching ways in which the high school sports scene in the area has evolved. They began reporting on their findings last week and came to the conclusion that club sports have had the greatest recent effect.

   New York reporters inclined to take on such a project should take note of some pretty interesting information contained in the package and one of its major conclusions:

   "In many cases, the club season has, for athlete exposure and recruiting purposes, become more essential than the high school season."

   That's amazing because it was only shortly before the turn of the century that the Minnesota State High School League began allowing athletes to play for organized teams in the offseason. Remem- ber, the NYSPHSAA was regarded as having been slow to the party when it moved more than a decade earlier to allow coaches to train their athletes in the offseason.

   Whereas a lot of reporting I've read in the past about club sports talked about financial aspects only in broad terms, The Star Tribune cited hard figures.

   One of the leading for-profit basketball programs charges $4,775 a season for players at the top level and $2,230 for beginners. The bill for the state's top softball club runs about $3,600 and a baseball academy for players ages 12-18 costs $3,150 annually.

   While the fees cover tournament registrations and much of the travel, camps and clinics that players are encouraged to attend are add-on fees.