Leading off today: Dennie Miles of Genesee Valley/Belfast is one victory away from becoming the winningest baseball coach in NYSPHSAA history following Saturday's no-hitter vs. Jasper-Troupsburg.
Ben Carter fanned seven in four innings, then Mason Thomas struck out the side in the fifth inning to complete a 12-0 victory and improve Genesee Valley/Belfast's record to 4-0.
The outcome left Miles, who previously coached at Wellsville and Avoca/Prattsburgh, tied with retired Fort Plain coach Craig Phillips at 806 victories. Miles can pull ahead on Monday as his team travels to Macombs Dam Park (the site of the old Yankee Stadium) in the Bronx to play Eldred.
The overall active state leader in baseball victories is Mike Turo of Monroe Campus in the PSAL. Turo, who began coaching in 1978, entered the season as the winningest active coach in the country with 1,493 wins according to MaxPreps.
Though he gained more notoriety for his 972 boys basketball victories in the CHSAA while mentoring the likes of Kenny Anderson, Kenny Smith, and Kevin Joyce, Archbishop Molloy legend Jack Curran holds the overall state mark in baseball with 1,708 wins before his death in March 2013.
This is not a typo; I repeat, this is not a typo
I was sure it had to have been a case of a slipped digit on the keyboard when I saw the note on social media Thursday night, but it turns out the report about a Section 6 player was accurate: Though just a freshman, Niagara Falls girls lacrosse star Colette Printup scored her 200th career goal despite being just six games into her freshman season.
Printup connected five times and added three assists during an 11-7 victory over West Seneca East as Niagara Falls improved to 4-2.
Printup rolled up 80 goals in 2023 as a seventh-grader, then topped that with 87 last spring. The five goals vs. WSE pushed her totals to 34 this spring and 201 for her career. She also has 58 assists in her two-plus varsity seasons.
The NYSPHSAA lists Shannon Smith as its state record-holder with 505 tallies for West Babylon from 2003-08.
Is this New York's youngest head coach?
I was a slacker in my final semester of college, taking one course to wrap up my degree requirements and working 15 to 20 hours a week taking scores over the phone at the local newspaper.
Taylor Chadderdon would probably frown upon that level of laziness. Chadderdon is finishing up her degree at Cayuga Community College this spring, works as the lacrosse director at Ultimate Goal, and suddenly found herself thrust into a new gig: head coach of the Bishop Ludden girls.
She's doing it at the age of 21 years old.
The Ludden job opened up suddenly last month when Sara Loving had to bow out after her husband landed an out-of-town job. Athletic Director Shaun Smith turned to the former Auburn High player to fill in.
"When the opportunity came about, I was like, 'I've never done it," Chadderdon told Syracuse.com. "And (Smith) was like, 'It'll be a learning experience for both you and the girls.' So I took the opportunity. I'm just excited. I think it is good luck at this point, really."
It's a transition year in other respects for Ludden. The school is fielding its own team this spring after sending players off to other Section 3 schools in the past, and Ludden has started taking in players from Bishop Grimes, its sports rival that is closing its doors in June.
The squad is off to an 0-3 start.
"Every girl's got a different schedule, so it's been a little bit of a challenge," Chadderdon said. "There's a lot of emotions going into the closing of Grimes, so that's also been a bit of a challenge. But the whole team has been amazing. So far this has been a great team."
Amityville ready to make the switch
Having dropped its lawsuit against the New York State Board of Regents in a bid to keep its Warriors mascot, Amityville's teams will be known as the Hawks beginning this fall.
The other finalists were the Cardinals, Storm and Tide. Students will now vote on a Hawks logo, Newsday reported.
The Hawks name and mascot choice has been a popular option for schools required to transition away from Native American imagery. Hoosic Valley and Watkins Glen took the same approach, and multiple other New York schools have gone with variations such as Red Hawks, Nighthawks, River Hawks, and Warhawks.
Speaking of name changes
Seeing this note from Steve Grandin on the choice of a name for a newly merged school district triggered ugly flashbacks for me.
Votes by residents in the Livingston Manor and Roscoe school districts back in December paved the way for those entities to merge into a single district beginning this summer. The combination of declining enrollments and a sizeable state financial incentive made the idea plausible, and Livingston Manor and Roscoe had already been fielding combined sports teams in several sports.
The process of integrating the two components into one will be somewhat of a work-in-progress in that first year, but one of the first big decisions is what jolted me: Last month, officials chose the name Rockland Central School District.
It's safe to say that typical New Yorkers who've heard of "Rockland" know the name as it relates to Rockland County. But the new school district is in Sullivan County -- at least 70 miles from Rockland County.
However, the choice of names is rooted in common sense because the district is anchored in the Town of Rockland.
It reminds me of 25 or so years ago when I was worked on the website of the Democrat and Chronicle in Rochester, having moved over from the sports department a few years earlier.
The D&C was (and still is) a Gannett company, and most of the decisions on technologies were handed down from the corporate offices. One service we offered readers was a searchable database of homes for sale in the region, which encompassed nine counties. Upkeep of the database was labor-intensive because the local operators of the vastly superior Multiple Listing Service understandably had no interest in sharing their valuable asset.
To make a long story short, our software -- which I swear we probably purchased for $75 and 10 Cap'n Crunch cereal box tops -- could not understand the distinction between Ontario County, and the Town of Ontario located roughly 20 miles north in Wayne County.
Every nighly refresh of our data caused a reset. So, five days a week, I had to search every listing containing the word "Ontario" and manually assign the property to the correct county.
There was no one happier than me whenever a home in the town or the county was sold and purged from our database.
