Leading off today: Longtime Section 5 coach Dennie Miles became the winningest baseball coach in NYSPHSAA history on Monday as Genesee Valley/Belfast defeated Eldred 5-1 in a non-league game played in the Bronx.
Miles' 807th win broke a tie with retired Fort Plain coach Craig Phillips. He previously coached at Wellsville and Avoca/Prattsburgh.
Miles' accomplishment can go atop the NYSPHSAA record book once his remaining wins for the season are totaled and the proper paperwork is submitted. However, it's possible Miles may have set another record with victory No. 807: the longest span between setting state records.
Here's the deal:
Back in 1968, Miles was an all-around standout athlete at Friendship, a tiny Section 5 school in Allegany County. That fall, while playing for the school's soccer team, he scored eight goals in a single game, something no one else had ever done. That means he went 57 years between setting state records.
There's at least one asterisk involved, but Miles' soccer feat stood alone atop the NYSPHSAA list until Sept. 8, 2023. On that date, Holden Kelly of Perry -- also in Section 5 -- also scored eight times.
As for the asterisk, there's the matter of performances that haven't made it into the NYSPHSAA records for whatever reason. The one that quickly comes to mind occurred on Sept. 12, 2017, when Slater Bushen of Lyme scored all 10 of his goals in the first 28 minutes of a 23-0 rout of Sandy Creek/Pulaski.
Given the hit-and-miss nature of record keeping, then, it's possible someone had scored nine or more before Miles connected for his eight goals.
MaxPreps, NFHS Network now under the same roof
The changes thus far are barely apparent, but the most useful national high school sports website is under new ownership, and the synergy possibilities as the integration process plays out are intriguing.
Nine months after putting the website on the market, CBS Sports announced on April 2 that it had sold MaxPreps.com to PlayOn, a private equity-backed company already immersed in the increasingly lucrative youth sports industry.
CBS had bought the then-5-years-old site in 2007 and grew it into a much-visited source of scores, rosters, and statistics for nearly 30,000 high schools across the country.
While CBS is holding on (for now) to 247Sports and Scout Media while Paramount completes its merger with Skydance, PlayOn has its own school sports ventures that it can bring to the MaxPreps table. Most prominent among them are the NFHS Network, which streams thousands of hours of live action per week, and GoFan, the country's largest high school ticketing solution. Atlanta-based PlayOn also owns VidSwap, a challenger to Hudl in the field of breaking down video and facilitating tape exchanges.
Not that CBS owner Paramount has ever been accused of being broke, but PlayOn has some financial runway to play with courtesy of Panoramic Ventures and KKR. While backers are going to want their investment to pay off as soon as possible, MaxPreps' model of relying upon schools to provide the bulk of their content for free keeps operating costs relatively low.
OnTech will field its own Section 3 football team
After partnering with Bishop Grimes in the Section 3 eight-man football league for two seasons,
OnTech Charter in Syracuse will field its own football team this fall, Syracuse.com reported.
The coach will be Jason Wait, who coached the combined team. The option to continue in that capacity ceased late this winter with the announcement that Grimes is closing down at the end of the current school year.
OnTech, which opened in 2017, will play eight-man football, the website reported.
Wait began at Grimes in 2016 and compiled a 37-34 record.
