Leading off today: Section 5 was a holdout in New York high school football scheduling, sticking with its geography-based league alignments for a number of years after much of the state converted to alignments tied to enrollment classifications.
In a column on Thursday, a sports editor made the pitch for returning to the old format to save small-school football, which he termed "at its worst" for the 2024 season.
The Batavia Daily News' Alex Brasky was careful to point out he wasn't leveling criticism at players, coaches, or administrators. Rather, he was making the point that football below the Class A level has fallen apart in terms of the number of teams. Section 5 fielded just five teams in Class B, six in C and eight in D this fall.
There are multiple factors, including the effect on classifications due to popoulation drops throughout the section (and the state). However, the biggest factor in only 42 teams competing for sectional championships in 11-man football was that 17 others opted out in order to play independently.
The independents included six that would have played in Class B, six from Class C, and three from Class D had they opted into the so-called federation-style scheduling introduced in 2019. Not surprisingly, participation levels were an issue in a lot of cases. However, schools were also considering travel -- the Section 5 footprint covers a wide stretch of the Finger Lakes and the Genesee Valley -- and reviving traditional rivalries.
"From our perspective, it was getting back our rivalries and playing teams that we were playing in all our other sports and increasing our numbers on varsity," Wayne coach Dave Marean told Brasky. "The past few years we were averaging 20 players on varsity and having to suit up five or more JV players every week. We were able to compete and were successful in federation, but we have worked too hard to see our program lose numbers and that is what has happened since we went to federation in 2019.
"Going independent this year we had 27 players on our team we were able to get our 'Border Bowl' rivalry back against Pal-Mac. At our home games, we ran out of concessions almost every game at halftime and our away game crowds were much bigger then years past too due to less travel. It was a great decision for us and was a great environment for the fans and communities."
I'd heard rumblings of unhappiness since the cutover from league scheduling, but football-playing schools voted after the 2023 season to stick with the federation format. Having watched 17 teams opt for independent status, I wonder if the vote would go the same way again now.
Fallout at Warrensburg
Mike Perrone, who has guided the Warrensburg/Lake George/Bolton varsity football team as well as the Warrensburg boys basketball and baseball teams, is out as coach of the basketball team, and his status as coach of the other two is questionable,
The Post-Star reported on Tuesday.
The change is apparently part of the fallout from an alleged sexual-abuse incident that led to the school districts shutting down the state's top-ranked Class D football team on the eve of the Section 2 tournament.
Warrensburg AD Scott Smith confirmed Chris Herbst has replaced Perrone as the boys basketball coach. Perrone held the position for nine seasons. When asked if Perrone would continue coaching baseball, Smith said, "I cannot comment on that matter at this point in time."
Nothing was said regarding Perrone's status in football.
Perrone told the paper he could not comment, and Warrensburg Superintendent Amy Langworthy had not returned initial phone messages.
The football team's season ended amid allegations stemming from an incident on a Lake George school bus on Aug. 31, on a team trip to a Syracuse football game. School officials said they reacted as soon as they learned of the alleged incident and reached out to the sheriff's department. Two Lake George students were subsequently arrested.
Schedule change for eight-man football
The NYSPHSAA has made a schedule change for an eight-man football semifinal this weekend. The contest between Trumansburg and Moravia, both from Section 4, has been moved out of Middletown and onto the field at Vestal High beginning at 9 a.m. on Saturday.
Vestal is hosting a NYSPHSAA tripleheader in 11-man football later in the day.
The move to the Section 4 venue will save the teams and their fans considerable travel time; Middletown is 176 miles from Moravia and 177 from Trumansburg.
Progress update
The pandemic was disruptive in numerous ways for everyone involved in high school sports, and that included me. One of the casualties in the spring of 2020 was the
Kerr Cup All-Sport Championship. That project, which crowned the top all-around athletics programs in the New York State Public High School Athletic Association, had begun in the 2008-09 school year. It is named in honor of longtime NYSSWA editor and Syracuse newspaperman Neil Kerr.
I'm happy to say the Kerr Cup is returning and we will announce final standings for the current school year shortly after the respective state championships in June.
I can also report that I've started work to compile results for the 2021-22 through 2023-24 school years.
I have tracked down nearly all the state-competition data -- an estimated 850 lines of data in a spreadsheet -- I need for the 2023-24 Kerr Cup. Now, it's a matter of locating the few remaining missing results and hand-scoring some swimming and track and field results. After that, I can add up points for each school and assign them to the appropriate classes.
The goal is to publish those results by mid-December and then take a look at whether it's possible to harvest the needed info from the prior years to continue filling in the Kerr Cup gaps.
Media news
Joe Kraus wrote on social media that Nov. 22 was his last day covering high school sports for the Niagara Gazette and Lockport Union Sun & Journal after two years there.
