Thursday, June 20, 2019: Buffalo schools AD placed on administrative leave

   Leading off today: Aubrey Lloyd, athletic director for the Buffalo Public Schools, has been placed on administrative leave, The Buffalo News reported Tuesday.

   District spokesperson Elena Cala confirmed the development to the paper, but no reason was disclosed and no further comments were issued by the district.

   Cala said Lloyd's supervisor, Anibal Soler, is handling Lloyd's duties on an interim basis. Lloyd did not return a voicemail message from the paper.

   Lloyd oversees 201 coaches and 120 physical education teachers and manages an athletics budget of $3.2 million. He has been on the job since March 2010.

   Gatorade awards: North Rockland junior Katelyn Tuohy has earned her eighth Gatorade athlete of the year award, having been selected the state's top girls outdoor track and field performer for the second year in a row.

   She's also been the New York girls cross country runner of the year the past two years, twice been the national cross country runner of the year and was named the national outdoor track athlete of the year last spring. And, of course, she was named Gatorade's overall female athlete of the year as a sophomore.

   In the just-concluded season, Tuohy won the 3,000-meter run at the state meet in 9:21.90, which ranked as the nation's No. 2 performance for the season.

    • I missed a couple of statewide awards in soccer recently because Gatorade waits until the spring to hand out honors in that sport.

   The New York girls player of the year is Marion junior Chloe DeLyser, making her the first recipient to earn the recognition since Marci Pasenello of Honeoye Falls-Lima in the 2005-06 school year.

   The forward scored a state single-season record 79 goals and added 26 assists this past season in leading the Black Knights to a 19-1 record. She already owns the state record for career goals with 260 and is just 57 shy of the national record with her senior season to come.

   Meanwhile, Millbrook School star Ousseni Bouda repeated as the state's boys player of the year. The Stanford recruit, who was Gatorade's national boys soccer player as a junior and earned at least one national honor this past year, scored 61 goals and added 12 assists last fall as the Mustangs went 15-4.

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   Moving on: Cattaraugus-Little Valley baseball coach Chuck Senn is calling it a career after more than 600 wins in a career that began in 1966 at Cattaraugus. He departs with a 604-340-5 record in baseball.

   "I have a lot of experiences in my career that I could talk about forever," he said. "I'll remember a lot of great things in the 53-year (46 as head coach) span. When you coach that long, a lot of great things happen and I don't want to single out any particular one."

   Aside from baseball, Senn has coached varsity and junior varsity football, soccer and basketball.

   Also retiring: Ron Moshier, who has seen and covered it all while at the Observer-Dispatch in Utica, wraps up his career as the sports editor there tomorrow.

   "As much as I love sports -- playing and writing about them -- it's really the people and the stories they have been willing to share with all of you that have kept me in this business for the last 30-some years," he wrote is a farewell piece this week.

   One of his memories in particular had a familiar ring to it for just about anyone who's worked in the business long enough.

   "I can remember the day one coach swore up and down -- I mean, really swore -- that he would never talk to me again

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and I would never cover another one of his team's games," he wrote, "but I'm happy to say that wasn't the case and when my father passed away, that same coach was in the funeral parlor line at the wake."

   And one more departure: Rome Free Academy athletic trainer Kelly Hoke has retired after a 33-year stint in the only professional position she ever held. Her accomplishments are a reminder of just how indispensable athletic trainers have become in many school districts.

   "I started the day football started in Rome. So, I kind of just hit the ground running and kept my head down for a few years, really, to just try to stay on top of everything and establish what I was doing," said Hoke, whose father was the football coach at RFA. "It's a very big sports town, and it was a very male-oriented sports town when I got here. There were only four games played on our main stadium field the whole year and that was varsity football.

   "Even though we had a woman athletic director and we had girls' sports, it was just such a male-oriented town that it took me a while to get accepted. I had one coach in particular who didn't speak to me the whole year. He would pass by me in the hall and not even look at me. They honestly didn't think I was going to stay."

   One of her scariest moments on the job came in 2015 when her eighth-grade son was knocked unconscious during a game.

   "I honestly thought my son was dead. He was running the football, and he hit the hole and a linebacker came up and threw my son like WWE. Instead of tackling my son and bringing him to the ground, he kind of picked him up and threw him. My son wasn't prepared for that. ... His head slammed down on the turf, and knocked him out cold for at least three minutes. I didn't even see it happen. I had my back to the field, taking care of someone else who was bleeding.

   My father was up in the stands, and he started screaming at me to go on the field. I was just screaming his name and pinching him under his shoulder pads to try to get him awake. He had his mouthpiece in and a facemask on, and I couldn't tell whether he was breathing."

   Good reading: A Washington Post reporter traveled to the North Country and wrote a fascinating account of the growth of girls lacrosse at Salmon River, which has come in no small part because the St. Regis Mohawk Reservation has finally come to embrace the concept of females playing the sport.

   The development comes at a time when awareness of violent crimes against women has grown, adding a dynamic to an already complex story for the reservation, spread over two New York counties and two Canadian provinces along the St. Lawrence River.