Leading off today: The Herkimer Magicians have pulled the proverbial rabbit out of their helmets.
After an 0-4 start to the season, the football team clawed its way back to .500 this week with a 45-11 victory over winless Hannibal to earn their way into Section 3 tournament consideration. Zack Petucci paced the effort on Wednesday with 123 yards and a pair of touchdowns on just eight carries.
Herkimer opened its season with losses to Little Falls, Mount Markham, Cato-Meridian, and Dolgeville. The latter three are currently ranked 10th, 12th, and fourth in the state in Class D by the New York State Sportswriters Association.
Once that brutal stretch of the schedule lifted, the Magicians kicked off October with a 43-21 win over Beaver River and then blanked Port Byron/Union Springs 45-0 and downed Westmoreland/Oriskany 22-7.
The winning streak under first-year head coach Zack Steele means Herkimer has exceeded its victory total from 2021-23 combined.
Quite the second half for Farmingdale RB
With nine carries for just 29 yards, junior running back Josh Kama wasn't much of a factor in the first half on Friday as Farmingdale went to the locker room in a 2-21 tie with Oceanside.
Saying he picked up the pace in the second half doesn't begin to do justice to what he accomplished it what turned into a 63-42 victory.
Kama turned up the heat and finished his night with 21 carries for 376 yards and scoring runs of 13, 35, 59, 5, 54, 84 and 70 yards.
"I'll remember this for life," Kama told Newsday after No. 19 Farmingdale handed No. 11 Oceanside its first loss in a matchup of state-ranked Class AA squads.
Football in Ohio apparently is a wee bit different
The football game was supposed to be the attraction on Friday in Mercer County on the western edge of Ohio as Marion Local traveled to Coldwater for a battle of 9-0 football teams to decide the Midwest Athletic Conference championship.
Adding spice to the small-schools matchup was the fact that the visitors came to town riding a 57-game winning streak and a resume of 10 state championships since 2011.
Any sense of drama didn't last long as Marion went on to a 35-0 victory to bag the state record for consecutive victories, but the real story is how someone left the stadium in possession of a substantially larger number: 22,483.
As in $22,483.
That was the winner's share of the 50/50 raffle.
Seriously.
Addressing bad behavior
Section 3 took an interesting step toward addressing abusive fan behavior toward game officials this week by convening a forum that brought together officials, ADs, administrators, and athletes to promote sportsmanship and support.
Jason Byrnes of the New York State Soccer Referees Association told the gathering that his organization is losing 10% of its officials every year, with abuse by spectators, coaches, and players one of the factors.
"The boundaries are crossed consistently," he said, according to Syracuse.com. "When those boundaries are crossed consistently -- and then with video, everyone's videoing everything. So now they're actually trying to prove even more how they're right and we're wrong. It's like, 'Well, you know what? We probably can be wrong. We probably are wrong.' But nobody wants to accept that we make mistakes as well. They want us to be high-level professional NFL or Premier League referees when we're just doing a high school game."
The athletes are not oblivious to the behavior the see in the stands and sometimes on the field.
"I just think respect is a big thing and everyone is there to do a job and we have to put trust in the officials and the coaches," said West Genesee's Sarah Domin, a multiple-sport athlete who serves on the NYSPHSAA Student-Athlete Advisory Council. "Just maintaining positivity is so important because everyone's there to have fun and to play."
