Saturday, Sept. 8, 2018: New Rochelle forfeits season-opening football win

   Leading off today: Three-time defending Section 1 champ New Rochelle revealed on Saturday that it has forfeited its Week 1 football victory due to the use of an ineligible player.

   In an explanation released on Twitter, Huguenots coach Lou DiRienzo said the unnamed player participated in the 41-0 victory over Yonkers Brave before participating in the required number of practices.

   "This was my mistake," DiRienzo said in the statement. "I would like to apologize to my player and their parents for my error. I would like to clearly and emphatically state that it was not a play to gain an advantage. The score of the game was 35-0 when the illegal participant was sent into game play."

   DiRienzo told The Journal News that he didn't inform his players until after Friday night's 41-0 win at Scarsdale.

   Postponed: Friday's varsity football game between Gloversville and Ballston Spa was postponed after a Gloversville player and a member of the coaching staff came down with Coxsackievirus. Saturday's JV contest was also scrapped.

   Coxsackieviruses are RNA viruses that most commonly may cause hand, foot, and mouth disease. They can cause fever, headache and muscle aches, and small blisters may appear on the feet, hands and mouth.

   The Gloversville district will be cleaning and disinfecting the high school this weekend.

   A makeup date for the games was not announced.

   AD's son lends a hand: Clarkstown North student Dylan Frawley is being credited with locating an injured hiker who'd been stranded for hours after falling off a trail in Hi Tor State Park in Rockland County.

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   Frawley, 16, the son of former Tappan Zee athletic director Liam Frawley, had hiked the area hundreds of times and quickly joined the search for the unidentified 26-year-old hiker.

   "I feel like anyone would have helped out in that situation if they knew about it and knew the area, and there were a lot of firefighters. It was definitely a group effort," Dylan Frawley said.

   Football issues: The Democrat and Chronicle did an examination of declining participation in football, including the effect of health and safety issues.

   The report led with one of my favorite stories -- now-retired Caledonia-Mumford coach and AD Mike Monacelli testifying before a congressional committee in 2010 on the impact of concussions on high school athletes.

   The story of Monacelli's participation that day is a favorite because of a rather memorable punchline he threw in when discussing it with a few reporters following a playoff game that year. I won't recount the specifics here because we now live in a climate in which everybody gets butt-hurt over everything, but it's a story that always gets a laugh when I tell it to friends and fellow reporters.

   Looking back: I loved the lead in The Journal News' feature on the Croton-Harmon girls volleyball coach who retired the summer after 44 seasons.

   "When a former Croton-Harmon volleyball player entered the gym on game day inconsolable after breaking up with her boyfriend, Robin Cooke visited the football field where he was practicing.

   "'I got him and made him apologize,' Cooke recalled. 'I told him, "You can break up with her after the game."    "Cooke learned over her 44-year career as the Tigers varsity volleyball head coach that it wasn't always easy to follow her creed: 'Drop everything at the door and play on the floor.'

   "'When somebody is that upset that they're screaming, sometimes you have to do little things,' she said."