Saturday, April 14, 2018: Wellsville's Miles breaks Sec. 5 baseball wins record

   Leading off today: Wellsville's 14-2 win over Cuba-Rushford gave baseball coach Dennie Miles career victory No. 706, breaking a tie with Ed Nietopski for the Section 5 record on Friday.

   "To be mentioned in the same breath as him is certainly an honor," said Miles, 69, who is in his 42nd season.

   Junior Cooper Ellsworth went 4-for-4 and pitched six innings of shutout ball after coming on in relief as Wellsville improved to 4-1 this season.

   Miles' teams have won 12 Section 5 championships.

   "The one thing as a coach, especially my age, you don't want to hang on and be one of those old codgers that should have retired," he said. "But you don't want to get out too soon because you wish you hadn't. As long as I still have the desire to be better -- I want to be a better coach, I want to be more effective with my speeches ... I'm a high-octane coach -- when I lose that kind of inspiration to be better and to really go at it then I know it's time to get out.

   "But I definitely have some more years in me. As long as the Lord is willing I plan on being here for a while more."

   More coaching milestones: Rye Neck's Joan Spedafino became the first Section 1 softball coach to reach 500 career wins as the Panthers blanked Port Chester 8-0.

   Sam Yannuzzi homered and drove in three runs, and Olivia Dunne struck out 12 to earn the win.

    • Vestal's Kyle Taborne struck out 11 over six scoreless innings to beat Maine-Endwell 5-1, giving coach Tank Anderson his 400th victory in 29 seasons.

   "I don't think too much of personal stuff, but it's been on my mind the past couple days because my son (Seton Catholic Central coach Nick) and everyone else was talking about it," Anderson said. "It just means I've been here for a while and had some really good ball players.

   "I'm hoping to get to 500. It's not an ending point for me."

   Team effort: Five Corning pitchers combined to toss a perfect game as the Hawks dominated Ithaca 19-0 in five innings in a Southern Tier Athletic Conference softball game.

   "I've never heard of a perfect game with five different pitchers," coach Mike Johnston said. "We joked about who got the win. Overall it was a great effort on the mound."

   Laura Bennett, Lexie Easling, Siobhan Stone, Jasmyn Allyn and Emily VanDelinder took turns on the mound. Offensively, Ataliyia Rijo went 3-for-4 with five runs batted in.

   Lacrosse milestone: Braelie Kempney finished with five goals and two assists to reach the 400-point career mark as the Carthage girls lacrosse team routed Indian River 20-0.

   The senior midfielder, who is in her fifth varsity season, has totaled 231 goals and 172 assists.

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   Preparing to prep: Williamsville South star point guard Greg Dolan, who averaged 28.6 points, 8.8 rebounds, 7.1 steals and 6.9 assists per game in his senior season, will attend prep school next fall, hoping to open up more college options.

   Dolan said on Twitter that he plans to attend Northfield Mount Herman in Massachusetts despite offers from Dolan had offers from Albany, Buffalo, Canisius and Dartmouth.

   "I'm using it to kind of get bigger and stronger and just be able to get more used to playing a lot of games in a season, 20 minute halves and to be prepared to make an impact as a

freshman coming into college," he told The Buffalo News.

   The four-year starter finished his carer with 2,019 points.

   Are they serious? A pair of New Hampshire youth baseball coaches allegedly planned to "bean" an 11-year-old girl in an attempt to intimidate her and get her to leave the league, the Fosters Daily Democrat reported.

   Police said they are looking into allegations made by the girl's father. Dan Klein said the two coaches had a discussion about intentionally throwing at his daughter's head during a league draft meeting last month.

   Klein said he was told of the conversation by two other coaches, who regarded the discussion as inappropriate and wanted to warn Klein of the threat, regardless of whether the threat was genuine.

   One of the coaches who reported the conversation selected Klein's daughter to be on his team.

   Unprecedented domination? Huh? As the years have passed, I've increasingly resisted making mention of rankings and all-star selections produced by USA Today. It's not my intention to go all holier than thou, especially since the NYSSWA has been responsible for some clunkers of its own over the years, but the national news outlet has a way of raising eyebrows by being fast and loose with facts that are not in dispute.

   Earlier this year, they did a feature on the nation's purported leading scorer in boys basketball, managing to ignore the vastly superior numbers of Joe Girard III solely on the basis of Glens Falls not recording its stats via MaxPreps.

   The latest instance came this week in an otherwise interesting feature about the tremendously successful McDonogh girls lacrosse team in Maryland.

   Here's the story's nut graph:

   "In a show of unprecedented domination, the Owings Mills, Md., powerhouse has won 186 consecutive games, just recently breaking Watertown (Mass.) field hockey's record for most unbeaten games in a row in team sports, according to the National Federation of High Schools record book."

   Just off the top of my head, Long Island's own Miller Place won 504 consecutive badminton matches from 1973 to 2005, racking up 35 straight county championships in the process.

   I'll give USA Today the benefit of the doubt there because the National Federation does not include badminton in its record book. Also, perhaps badminton isn't a "team" sport because contests are made up of individual matches as opposed to being continuous-action competitions like basketball or soccer games.

   I suppose, cross country technically doesn't fit the team criteria either, though the fabled Lincoft (N.J.) CBA boys program would probably beg to differ after 289 straight wins from 1973 to 2007. (New York's own Fredonia and McQuaid both had streaks of their own in excess of 200 wins.)

   Even putting those accomplishments aside, how could USA Today not have recognized the Sweet Home girls volleyball team's streak of 292 victories from 1978 to '87? There's no way volleyball cannot be regarded as a team sport by any definition -- and the feat is in the National Federation record book.

   One bit of trivia about McDonogh: Its last loss came to Canandaigua nine seasons ago.