Leading off today: Let it not be said that Angel Walia took the easy path to the NYSPHSAA tennis championship in girls singles. The Herricks senior defeated the top three seeds in the draw to capture the title on Wednesday at the USTA National Tennis Center in Queens.
The exclamation point on the Herculean effort by the sixth-seeded senior came in the final when Walia rattled off the final six points in a tie-breaker to dispatch top-seeded Olivia Dartawan of Niskayuna, 6-2, 7-6 (7-4).
"I was like, 'I'm not playing a third set because a third set could go either way,'" Walia told Newsday. "She was hungry. I was hungry as well. So I just thought I needed to win those points right there."
Closing out the match made Walia Herricks' first singles champion since 1981, achieved despite dropping her semifinal match in the Section 8 championships, which contributed to dropping her to the sixth seed.
"So I just worked hard that whole week and fixed my mentality," she said. "I reminded myself that this is who I am (and) I could do it."
• The sixth-seeded Horace Greeley team of Allison Tsai and Michelle Rosenblit broke serve in all seven games and defeated Great Neck South's Madison Lee and Gabrielle Villegas, 6-1, 6-1, for the doubles championship.
"We didn't give ourselves a chance," Villegas said.
Football teams on the move in 2025
With last week's approval of enrollment numbers and new classification cutoffs by the NYSPHSAA Executive Committee, we now know how the football classes will shape up in 2025.
The NYSSWA's Steve Grandin ran through the numbers to determine which schools will be moving up or down by a class.
The list below doesn't include potential shifts in class for merged programs (which rely upon an enrollment formula) or private and charter schools that are subject to being moved up in class through decisions at the sectional level.
Two changes stand out above all the rest: Somers and Waverly, currently ranked No. 1 in the state in Class A and C respectively, will both play in Class B in 2025.
| SECTION 1 | 2024 | 2025 |
| Clarkstown South | A | AA |
| Carmel | AA | A |
| Somers | A | B |
| Bronxville | B | C |
| Croton-Harmon | B | C |
| Rye Neck | B | C |
| SECTION 2 | | |
| Averill Park | A | B |
| Broadalbin-Perth | B | C |
| Fonda-Fultonville | C | D |
| Voorheesville | C | D |
| Taconic Hills | C | D |
| SECTION 3 | | |
| Carthage | B | A |
| Henninger | AA | A |
| Fayetteville-Manlius | AA | A |
| Westhill | B | C |
| Oneida | B | C |
| Lowville | C | D |
| SECTION 4 | | |
| Waverly | C | B |
| Chenango Valley | B | C |
| Oneonta | B | C |
| Sidney | C | D |
| SECTION 5 |
| Eastridge | B | A |
| Hilton | AA | A |
| James Monroe | A | B |
| Vertus Charter | B | C |
| Midlakes | B | C |
| Mynderse | C | D |
| |
| SECTION 6 | 2024 | 2025 |
| Grand Island | B | A |
| Amherst | B | A |
| Starpoint | A | B |
| Springville | B | C |
| Newfane | C | D |
| SECTION 7 | | |
| AuSable Valley | D | C |
| Plattsburgh | B | C |
| SECTION 8 | | |
| Clarke | B | A |
| SECTION 9 | | |
| Beacon | B | A |
| Highland | B | C |
| Spackenkill | B | C |
| Fallsburg | B | C |
| SECTION 10 | | |
| No changes | | |
| SECTION 11 | | |
| Islip | B | A |
| Half Hollow Hills East | AA | A |
| Bellport | AA | A |
| Centereach | AA | A |
| Smithtown East | AA | A |
| Rocky Point | A | B |
| Wyandanch | A | B |
| Center Moriches | B | C |
| Southampton | B | C |
|
Milestones
• When the Mount Academy girls volleyball team advanced to the Mid-Hudson Athletic League championship match with a 3-0 victory over Millbrook on Monday, it marked career victory No. 500 for coach Sandy Mancuso-Lopez. She began her career with 380 victories at Kingston.
A long time between losses for a soccer powerhouse
Ward Melville kicks off defense of its back-to-back Section 11 and NYSPHSAA girls soccer championships Thursday with a Class AAA quarterfinal against Sachem North.
The Patriots finished the regular season with a 14-0-1 mark, which made them 50-0-7 since losing in the 2021 Suffolk County semifinals. The unbeaten streak is one better than the Long Island record of 56 games without a loss by Rockville Centre South Side.
Industry news
The Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J., has announced it will
stop publishing its print editions and move to an online-only format beginning Feb. 3, 2025. Executives cited rising costs, decreasing circulation, and a reduced demand for newspapers.
In addition, the Star-Ledger's owners will cease printing The Times of Trenton and the South Jersey Times, as well as the weekly Hunterdon County Democrat.
To some extent, The Star-Ledger, the highest-profile publication in New Jersey, is making the move from a position of strength. In August, Comscore, a media measurement and analytics company, ranked the paper's NJ.com website as the No. 1 local news site in the country.
I raise this development because it's a warning shot to those denying the inevitable. If a paper with the profile of The Star-Ledger can stop publishing -- skipping the common interim step of dropping down to publishing fewer days per week -- then it can (and will) happen elsewhere.
Unfortunately, it's inevitable that we'll soon start seeing this in New York, too.
Following up
I mentioned in a
recent blog that the governing body for Wisconsin scholastic sports banned two Milwaukee schools from the football playoffs for two years due to missing paperwork.
The latest development is that Milwaukee Public Schools is in the process of rehiring its former athletics commissioner to clean up its bureaucratic problems.
TV station WTMJ reported Bill Molbeck is being hired as a limited-term employee. Molbeck worked for the MPS Recreation Department for 28 years, including 17 as athletics commissioner. He left in 2019, and Bobbie Kelsey took over.
Kelsey has been under fire after her office failed to file paperwork for Bay View High and Pulaski, causing their football teams to forfeit wins and resulting in the two-year ban.
