Saturday, Nov. 17, 2018: Ex-Liverpool, SU great Tim Green diagnosed with ALS

   Leading off today: I wasn't planning on blogging this weekend other than to recap some of the championship action around the state as the fall season winds down, but there's been too much compelling reporting taking place these past couple of days, so here we go ...

   Tim Green diagnosed with ALS: Former Syracuse and NFL defensive lineman Tim Green revealed in a Facebook post Wednesday night that he has been diagnosed with a slowly progressing case of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, widely known as Lou Gehrig's Disease.

   Green, 54, said he's been coping with "neurological problems" in his hands for five years, with doctors initially attributing the difficulties to damage his arms received as a star player at Liverpool, Syracuse University and in the NFL.

   Green will tell his story on "60 Minutes" on Sunday night.

   Greene was selected large schools co-player of the year by the New York State Sportswriters Association in 1981. His decision to attend SU has often been cited as a turning point in the rebuilding of the school's football program.

   A labor of love: The Press & Sun-Bulletin wrote a nice feature Friday on Mike Connell, the man behind the Section4Football.com website and a longtime helper of the NYSSWA.

   Connell, 63, has encyclopedic knowledge of high school football but is also well-versed in other sports, not to mention pop culture. He frequently turns up news and trivia that find their way into our blog entries.    The best thing about his website is that there is no advertising and no subscription fee. He's well into his second decade of operating Section4football.com out of love of sport and technology.

   "I'm my own boss; I can do what I want," he said. "If I have ads and I'm charging somebody, I don't want them to be able to ask for something. I just feel like I can quit at any time. Plus, it doesn't really cost me that much."

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   Fighting her family and the NCAA: Emily Scheck was a soccer player at Webster Schroeder as well as a distance runner good enough to compete in the state indoor track meet as a freshman in 2014. She's now a sophomore at Canisius College, where she has a partial athletic scholarship -- and a personal life that has been turned on its head.

   The Buffalo News reported that Scheck, 19, has for all practical purposes been disowned by her parents, quite possibly for no reason other than they learned that she is a lesbian. (Her parents dispute the contention, but the evidence certainly points in that direction.)

   Scheck suddenly found herself cut off emotionally and financially this fall, creating a hardship.

   "I couldn't even get groceries, initially," she said. "I was just really relying on my roommates and my girlfriend."

   One of those friends told Scheck's story on GoFundMe.com on Nov. 7 and set out to raise $5,000 to help her make it through the school year. By Saturday morning, more than $37,000 had been raised before the story had been widely reported by most mainstream media.

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   Naturally, money attracted the attention of the NCAA. Naturally, the NCAA's initial inclination was to make Scheck's life a bit more miserable. Alerted to the GoFundMe campaign by the college, the NCAA actually had to stop and ponder her eligibility status for several days -- Scheck and her roommate briefly quit the cross country team in the interim to try to resolve one obvious potential issue -- before ruling she could keep the money as long as the college monitors the contributions.

   Though the financial issue is resolved for the moment, reconciliation with the family isn't in the cards for now. Scheck's family wants her to undergo counseling.

   "As long as I stay in Buffalo and I don't come home, they've made it clear that I'm still on my own," she said.

   Track team in limbo: The reporting by The New York Post has holes in it, but there's suspicion that the mayor's office and the city's education department might be pulling the strings in a decision that will keep a charter school with some talented athletes from competing in New York City's PSAL indoor track this season.

   The Success Academy High School of the Liberal Arts, part of a network of charters despised by certain elected officials addicted to campaign contributions from teachers unions, is co-located with three traditional public high schools at the Norman Thomas campus in Manhattan. The four schools applied to create a PSAL-eligible track team but were rejected according to the Success Academy coach.

   Under PSAL rules, schools that share a building must compete as one entity. How the proposed arrangement runs afoul of the rules wasn't clear from the newspaper story.

   Among the athletes being frozen out is Division I prospect Ronn'e Bailey, a junior whose times in the sprints would make her a threat to win PSAL and Federation championships at the end of the season. Without relief from the bureaucrats, Bailey and others will be limited to club competitions.

   "Ronn'e will be OK," coach Ozzie Henderson said. "But there are other people on the team who are going to miss out on opportunities to smaller programs because they aren't being seen."