Leading off today: Senior standouts on the four NYSPHSAA championship teams have earned player of the year honors in boys lacrosse from the New York State Sportswriters Association.
The Class A player of the year is attackman Anthony Raio of Half Hollow Hills.
In Class B, the honoree is Garden City midfielder Luke Cascadden.
Somers midfielder Miguel Iglesias picked up the top honor in Class C.
In Class D, attackman Teagan Fingar of state champion Penn Yan shares the player of the year award with Chenango Forks goalie Lucus Bartlow.
The complete 2025 all-state team is available in this site's reference section.
Speaking of lacrosse
As long as we're on the subject of talented lacrosse players, one of the state's all-time greats (in multiple sports, actually) was in the news in my hometown two weeks ago as the Rochester Knighthawks of the indoor National Lacrosse League
acquired Zed Williams in a trade with the Colorado Mammoth.
Williams graduated in 2013 from Silver Creek, where he set a still-standing national record for career points on the lacrosse field. He was also first-team all-state in football in 2011 and 2012, as well as first-team all-state in basketball in 2013 after making the fourth team as a junior.
Williams, 30, is a member of the Seneca Nation's Wolf Clan, growing up on the Cattaraugus Territory. The Seneca Nation recently purchased the Knighthawks from Buffalo Bills owners Terry and Kim Pegula.
Coincidentally, Williams earned notoriety last year after receiving an invitation to the Bills' rookie minicamp to try out as a linebacker.
How did they do that?
A couple of Section 4 football team are sitting atop the NYSPHSAA football standings with sparkling 1-0 records while everyone else has barely settled into their regular routine after two-a-days.
Waverly defeated Troy (Pa.) 14-13, and Windsor downed Tioga 9-7 over the weekend in what has come to be known as "Week 0" on the football calendar.
Though a bunch of PSAL, CHSFL, and AIS schools got the required 10 practices in and took advantage of the ability to play games (see: Week 0 scoreboard) rather than scrimmage over Labor Day weekend, most of New York adhered to the more traditional schedule calling for openers in Week 1.
That doesn't mean, however, that Waverly, Windsor, and Tioga will be playing more games than the rest of the NYSPHSAA is allowed. State Education Department regulations limit teams to 14 games, though it's only possible to get that far by reaching the state final in Syracuse.
Thus, the risk of maxxing out on games before the final is mostly theoretical. Still, the three Section 4 teams will get around it by taking bye weeks somewhere during the course of the regular season.
The NYSPHSAA wins one in court
This one had been bothering me since the day I heard the details of the original ruling, so I was happy to learn recently that the decision was overturned. Unfortunately, it came too late to prevent Zariel Macchia from winning a state indoor track and field championship that should have gone to someone else.
The details: Section 11 determined that Macchia, a William Floyd senior at the time (she is now a Brigham Young University freshman), violated the NYSPHSAA rule against competing in-season against college athletes when she ran in an invitational in Boston on Feb. 15. That should have knocked her out of the state indoor championship meet in March.
However, Macchia's attorney argued in State Supreme Court in Suffolk County that the NYSPHSAA was inconsistent in enforcing it's Rule 7, a restriction that the runner and her family said they did not know existed. With a concern about potential irreparable harm by upholding the ineligibility ruling, Justice Christopher Modelewski decided Macchia could run in the state meet at Ocean Breeze Athletic Complex.
Zacchia finished second in the girls 3,000 meters that day, but she won the 1,000 meters in 2:49.23 in a close finish over Smithtown West's Laina Friedmann (2:49.41) and Bellport's Ella Masem (2:49.77). Four others ran sub-2:52 and could have been in the mix for the top spot on the podium depending on how strategy might have played out sans Macchia.
That should have been the end of the story, but the NYSPHSAA did not let it go -- nor should they have. The initial court ruling ripped open a hole in the governing body's rule book, possibly opening a door for future athletes and teams fighting ineligibility rulings. However, the court did not rule at that time on the rest of the issue: potentially striking down Rule 7 altogether.
The NYSPHSAA made the case to Modelewski that the rule existed for more than 25 years, is clearly stated in the organization's handbook (with a link to a video explanation), and has been applied consistently. It would have been better had the judge listened the first time, but he did listen this time.
"Notwithstanding this finding in favor of petitioner, the Court will not interfere with the ability of NYSPHSAA to enforce the College Rule nor require NYSPHSAA to review,
revise, or conduct an investigation regarding its implementation of the College Rule," Modelewski wrote in his final decision on May 29. "According to Respondents, no member school, including petitioner's, has challenged either the College Rule or the penalty for a violation of the rule. ... The Court finds that the College Rule has a sound and rational basis and is neither arbitrary or capricious, nor is there an abuse of discretion on the part of NYSPHSAA in implementing and enforcing the College Rule."
Now if we could just get the judicial system to quit sticking its nose in perfectly reasonable one-game suspensions ...
