Leading off today: A Mohonasen High School assistant coach has been fired after allegedly hitting a female athlete on Thursday afternoon, area media outlets reported.
Rotterdam Police Department Lt. Patrick Farry said the department is investigating after "there was an allegation that a coach had struck a student in the face during wrestling practice," the Times Union reported. The coach has not been publicly identified.
"We found out Thursday night of the situation that an incident had happened, and we terminated the coach early Friday morning," Matt Ronca, the school's athletic director, told The Daily Gazette. He added that he believed charges were filed.
WTEN-TV reported that there is video documentation of in incident involving the coach and Elexis Rostocki, 14, a freshman wrestler who attends Schalmont High School. Desire Rostocki, the girl's mother, said the school's resource officer showed her security video of the incident on Friday.
She told the Schenectady paper she watched her daughter approach the coach and touch his chin, trying to get his attention. Next, Desire saw the coach strike Elexis across the mouth and became verbally aggressive.
"She did it once and I think she did it a second time, and instead of his reaction being to maybe swat her hand away, he hit her directly in the face," the mother told WNYT-TV. "And then started to point in her face and curse at her."
Elexis Rostocki said the coach tried to apologize after practice.
"I was speed-walking to the back door, and all I hear is, 'Lexi, stop walking. I want to talk to you,'" she said. "I was, like, 'No, I don't want to talk to you.'"
Naclerio can tie basketball victories record Monday
The Benjamin Cardozo boys basketball team defeated August Martin 76-59 in PSAL action on Saturday, moving coach Ron Naclerio to within one victory of the state record held by the late Jack Curran of Archbishop Molloy.
Naclerio, 68, could pull into a tie on Monday when the Judges take on John F. Kennedy Campus.
Hired as the head coach in 1981 -- a season during which Cardozo went 1-21 -- Naclerio has spent his entire coaching career at the Queens school. He both played against and coached against Curran.
"Jack was the baseball coach at Molloy and I was a pretty good baseball player in high school at Cardozo and in college at St. John's," Naclerio told MaxPreps. "So I actually got to play against him in baseball.
"When I just started coaching basketball, we got a game together because Cardozo had the classiest public school and Jack had the classiest private school. So we set up a game. He brought (future NBA player) Kenny Smith and beat us something like 99-57."
• I hadn't seen this previously reported, but Naclerio The New York Post reported last week that Naclerio had to fight to remain on the Cardozo sideline last month.
According to the paper, city investigators accused him of improper recruitment, leading to his suspension on Dec. 3. A court granted him a restraining order only to have school security guards escort Naclerio out of the John Bowne High School gym in Dec., 6.
Last week, administrators at Cardozo, where he is a substitute teacher, hit the coach with a two-game suspension, which was covered by what transpired in December. The paper reported Naclerio was also hit with a letter of reprimand.
Naclerio denies any wrongdoing, and his attorney said he was considering legal options to clear his name.
Keep an eye on this development
A couple of my recent blogs mentioned developments in Alabama, where elected officials are making heavy-handed demands of the state's governing bodies for high school sports despite the fact that the Alabama High School Athletic Association is not a taxpayer-supported entity.
We've seen the New York legislature attempt to get involved in various matters -- mostly unsuccessfully -- over the years, with a downstate assemblyman's push to separate public and private school playoffs a current example.
In the course of researching something else over the weekend, I stumbled across a push by New York elected officials on another subject.
After more than a year of intense examination, the NYSPHSAA Executive Committee decided last May not to move forward with a proposal to grant the Conference of Big 5 School Districts (Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Yonkers, and New York City) the same voting rights that each of the 11 sections get. The broader Central Committee reaffirmed that decision over the summer.
I attended both meetings and heard all the pros and cons of the proposal. What I didn't know, however, was that the Big 5 enlisted help in Albany after the May vote.
On June 2, a bill sponsored by Central New York state Sen. Christopher Ryan was referred to the Rules Committee. A week later, the Assembly version of the bill sponsored by Rochester's Harry Bronson was referred to the Education Committee.
If approved in the legislature and signed into law by Gov. Kathy Hochul, it would require the NYSPHSAA to add two Big 5 voting members to the Executive Committee and four Big 5 voting members to the Central Committee.
Bronson has already resubmitted the Assembly version of the bill this month, though it has not popped up yet in th new Senate session.
I explained last February why -- aside from my general dislike of politicians -- I cannot get on board with changing the structure of the two key NYSPHSAA operating committees.
