Leading off today: Trevor Yeboah-Kodie scored three touchdowns and Colin Hart threw for three as
Garden City extended its winning streak to 34 games with a 42-14 victory over Calhoun on Thursday in the Nassau II football semifinals.
The Colts scored on the game's first possession only to see Garden City respond with five unanswered touchdowns before halftime.
Yeboah-Kodie carried the ball six times for 172 yards and scores of 86 and 48 yards. He also caught a 19-yard Hart pass for a TD and picked off a pass on defense. Hart was 5-for-8 passing for 130 yards, including a 25-yard touchdown to Dan Boccafola and a 73-yarder to Justin Coppola.
Calhoun QB Nick Turrini suffered a leg injury early in the game and departed for good after getting sacked early in the second quarter.
"It started pretty badly, but we got it together," Garden City coach Dave Ettinger said. "Trevor and Colin? Trevor can go any time he touches the ball. And Colin's experience with playing in big games is just what you want in a quarterback."
Eight straight: Lauren Weir's 19 kills and two aces paced Kings Park past Westhampton 26-24, 25-22, 21-25, 25-16 in the Suffolk Class A girls volleyball championship, giving the Kingsmen eight straight championships.
First-year coach Luis Sepulveda inherited just two players with starting experience and Kings Park suffered its first two-loss regular season in recent memory, causing the team to enter sectionals as a No. 5 seed.
"It was an unknown," said Sepulveda, who previously coached at Baldwin. "I've built programs, but I've never taken over one as successful as this one, seven-time Long Island champs. They were young and a little inexperienced in that a lot of them never played varsity level."
More site changes: The New York State Public High School Athletic Association has changed its boys soccer schedule for this weekend after heavy rain left the grass fields at Middletown High School and Twin Towers Middle School unplayable.
Saturday's semifinals will be played on Middletown High's turf field as well as Marlboro High School and Mount Saint Mary College in Newburgh. The state finals will all be played on the Middletown turf field beginning at 8:30 a.m. In order to accommodate that, the start time for the Class d final has been changed to 4:30 p.m.
A fair question: Justin Ritzel of The Citizen wrote about the oddity that is Section 3 girls volleyball. Though fall is the state's official season for the sport, Central New York has twice as many teams participating in the winter than in the fall.
Consider this: The entire Class C sectional bracket consisted of two teams, with Skaneateles beating Hannibal to collect the trophy and roll right into the NYSPHSAA tournament. Classes AA and B were relative hotbeds of participation with five teams apiece.
You can read the column here.
Lousy ending: A data entry mistake kept an Oregon school out of its state football tournament.
