Leading off today: Here's a story lead (with an assist from a coach) so good that I wish I'd written, courtesy of Drew Wemple at
The Daily Gazette in Schenectady:
With a championship streak older than any active player, Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake girls' volleyball coach Gary Bynon has a special understanding of the pressure his student-athletes have to deal with each time they take the floor.
"We've been through so much. I don't think that a lot of people understand that we're still going into every game as the target," Bynon said. "And they have nothing to do with it. They weren't even born when it started, and they're out here playing, with everybody playing their best game against them."
BH-BL won its 23rd straight Section 2 championship be defeating Mohonasen in the Class A title match in straight sets Saturday. That came on the heels of the Spartans' 38th consecutive regular-season division title.
Garden City football sets state record
Garden City scored on all five first-half possessions Friday during a 31-0 Section 8 football quarterfinal win over Baldwin, giving the Trojans their 63rd straight victory and a state record in the sport.
Maine-Endwell held the previous record of 62 straight wins, spanning 2011-15.
"There have been a lot of great programs over all the years, and for us to stand alone is something really special," Garden City coach David Ettinger (117-3 record in 11 seasons) told Newsday. "It says a lot about the full commitment to the program from our coaches, players and administrators and the support we get from our community."
Garden City, which last lost in the 2019 Long Island Class II championship game, moves on to play East Meadow next weekend. The Trojans are three wins away from an unprecedented fifth straight Long Island Championship.
"None of our seniors have ever lost a game in this program," senior lineman Zach Olson said. "This streak started with my brother Sawyer's grade, and no one wants to be the team that sees the streak end. We have a winning mindset around here and we put in the work. It's been fun."
PSAL football playoff scenario
I don't pretend to understand the inner workings of the PSAL or the nuances of its playoff processes, and I respect the fact that coordinating 500-plus schools -- some configured as multiple schools in the same building -- across the five boroughs is a beast to get one's arms around.
Having said that, someone who is better versed than I am in New York City football, has pointed out that results from Sunday's regular-season games could create playoff seedings for the quarterfinals that rank somewhere between an anomaly and an atrocity.
A-Tech and Information Tech both enter Sunday action with 3-4 records. Respectively, they are scheduled to take on Long Island City and Thomas Jefferson Campus, both of which are 5-2.
With wins today, both A-Tech and Information Tech could get into the eight-team Conference 1A quarterfinals with 4-4 records. There's nothing wrong with that, because that's where you'd expect middle-of-the-pack teams to land in a 16-team league.
Even if both lose to slip to 3-5, it still seems likely that at least one could slide into a playoff berth. Again, that's not particularly unusual in an environment in which teams only play half the members of the league because of its size.
Where it gets nutty, however, is that the math works out in such a way that 4-4 A-Tech and Info Tech seemingly would nail down the top two seeds in the playoffs. In fact, one of them could still be seeded No. 1 with a 3-5 record.
They would be seeded ahead of Mott Haven and Petrides, which both carried 7-0 records into the weekend, as well as East Harlem Pride (6-1), Adlai Stevenson Campus (5-3), Thomas Jefferson Campus (5-2), and Long Island City (5-2).
How is that possible (aside from Common Core Math creeping into the calculations)? Strength of schedule.
By PSAL calculations, A-Tech's SOS figure is 46. The four teams with a 45 SOS aside from Info Tech are all toward the bottom of the standings with two or fewer wins. Everyone else in the playoff mix has an SOS between 41 and 44.
Strength of schedule is a crucial criteria in the PSAL seeding process. A year ago, Mott Haven and Frederick Douglass Academy at 4-4 were seeded ahead of Jamaica and A-Tech at 6-2 because of strength of schedule.
We should know how the playoff picture unfolds by Monday morning, but this has the potential to be awkward for the PSAL. At the very least, they will need to start from scratch in developing a scheduling philosophy for the 2026 regular season.
Passings
Art Kranick, who led the Saratoga Springs cross country and track teams to immense success as a coaching duo with his wife, Linda, died Saturday, The Times Union reported.
A cause of death was not immediately known, but the couple resigned from coaching this past April, citing Art Kranick's medical conditions.
The Kranicks mentored multiple sectional and state champion runners and teams, including Nike Cross Nationals championships in 2019 and 2022. Their cross country teams combined to win nearly 30 Federation championships in nearly four decades of coaching.
