Leading off today: West Seneca West boys basketball coach
Des Randall is leaving his alma mater to take over as the men's coach at Villa Maria.
Randall, 30, takes over the fifth-year program from Don Silveri, who guided the team to back-to-back 25-win seasons and an appearance in the United States Collegiate Athletic Association Tournament. The USCAA consists of mostly small four-year colleges and junior colleges.
"It's been my aspiration to coach in college. I couldn't pass up this opportunity," Randall said. "Coach Silveri laid out the blueprint for success. I just want to continue what he started."
Randall turned West Seneca West into a championship program during his two seasons. The 2017-18 team rattled off 24 straight wins to open the season before falling in the NYSPHSAA Class A quarterfinals. Last year, WSW shook off a slow start after star guard Juston Johnson was ruled ineligible, won the Section 6 Class A-1 title and finished 13-12.
He previously coached two seasons at Bishop Timon-St. Jude.
Marsh steps down at Corcoran: Jim Marsh met with his team Thursday to inform players that he has resigned after 35 years leading the Syracuse Corcoran girls basketball program.
"It's bittersweet," Marsh said in a statement in which he acknowledged he is not ruling out a return to the sideline down the road.
Marsh coached Corcoran to NYSPHSAA championships in 1993 and 1998 as well as eight Section 3 crowns en route to more than 500 career victories. He missed the 2015-2016 season while undergoing treatment for liver cancer.
Corcoran finished 9-11 last season.
All-state player injured: All-state selection Baylee Teal will miss most or all of the upcoming Penfield girls basketball season after tearing an ACL this spring.
Teal told the Democrat and Chronicle she was injured in a May AAU game in Virginia.
Teal averaged 18 points and five assists a game to help Penfield reach the Section 5 Class AA championship game as a junior. She was selected sixth-team all-state by the New York State Sportswriters Association.
"They (doctors) can't give me a specific timetable for when I'll be recovered, usually it's around nine months, but mine is whenever I feel 100 percent," she said. "I couldn't really move at first, but we started with some small stuff and I had to wait for my quad to wake up and my range of motion was behind a little."
Teal has been in communication with coach Stephanie Gaitley at Fordham University, where she'll enroll next year.
"She told me nothing changed, and they still want me," Teal said. "It told me she cared a lot."
Collateral damage: Decisions have consequences.
That's apparent within the baseball community in Western New York, where the decision to not renew a high school coach's contract appears to have contributed to the demise of a long-established summer program for the district's students.
A story in the East Aurora Advertiser this week tracks the fallout from a July 1 school board decision to let Iroquois coach Marv Matteson go after 19 seasons in charge of the varsity. Unrelated to his school duties, Matteson had been coordinating or coaching three summer baseball teams serving approximately 50 players in the Iroquois program.
The team competing in the Erie County Baseball Association was able to get started while Matteson was still the Iroquois coach, the paper reported. But the two teams scheduled to participate in the Police Athletic League had to be scraped after Matteson said he was too frustrated by his firing to move forward with them himself or find new coaches.
The ECBA team subsequently forfeited three straight games due to lack of participation and had to withdraw from