Leading off today: Five of the largest Section 3 schools have given up trying to compete against a three-time defending state champion, choosing to use a scheduling option that allows them to avoid playing Syracuse CBA in regular-season football.
According to Syracuse.com, Cicero-North Syracuse, Henninger, Liverpool, Rome Free Academy, and Utica Proctor will avail themselves of the option to play in Class AA Tier 2 this fall. That leaves Baldwinsville as the section's only Class AA public school choosing to remain in Tier 1 and forces CBA into piecing together a statewide schedule.
"There's a scenario (where) we'll never beat them," Proctor coach Steve Strife told the website. "We'd have to put a team together, a once-in-a-decade team ... to be able to match. Look at what they've done in the state the last three years -- nobody can play with them."
CBA had already agreed to open against defending CHSAA state champion Iona Prep before the news about the breakaway Section 3 schools emerged. Besides Baldwinsville, the Brothers will play Rochester's University Prep, three Monsignor Martin opponents (St. Francis, Canisius, and St. Joe's), and Catholic Memorial in Massachusetts.
"We're certainly disappointed that some of the local rivalries that we have may not happen," CBA Athletic Director Buddy Wleklinski told the website.
According to the website, 11 coaches and an AD approached Section 3 during the 2023 season with allegations of recruiting violations by CBA. They lacked supporting evidence, though, and the section did not take any action.
Just weeks after CBA completed its three-peat, coaches and sectional administrators aired concerns to the NYSPHSAA about non-public and charter schools. Parallel to that, downstate superintendents prodded the NYSPHSAA to re-convene its ad hoc committee on schools without borders. That group met last week and took preliminary thoughts back to their respective sections, with a follow-up scheduled for this spring.
For now, though, the Section 3 Class AA playoffs will take on a same-but-different look. All seven schools are eligible, but CBA and Baldwinsville, which has scheduled games with most of the Tier 2 teams, will be the top seeds.
Meanwhile, Section 3 may need to re-evaluate its tier system. Tier 2 was designed a few years ago to give struggling programs the ability to play a less difficult schedule while still remaining eligible for sectionals. It was not envisioned as a option for stable programs to avoid certain opponents.
"It's not the most convenient thing in the world. It's not the right thing to do," Strife said. " ... It was basically to shed light on, like, 'Hey, look, this is not fun for us.'"
There's a reason this sounds sort of familiar
The decision by the five Class AA football teams to avoid playing Christian Brothers Academy isn't the most radical recent move by Section 3 schools to disassociate themselves from non-public and charter schools.
Back in May 2017, most of the Central New York Counties League members fled to join breakaway members of the Onondaga High School League's Freedom Conference to form the 16-school Salt City Athletic Conference.
Though federation scheduling meant football and hockey were unaffected, the move left CBA, Bishop Ludden, Bishop Grimes, and Syracuse Academy of Science to fend for themselves in most sports.
Speaking of football scheduling
The Nassau County Football Coaches Association has given the go-ahead to a scheduling change that will replace one conference game with crossovers against other Section 8 teams this fall.
The matchup everyone is already pointing to is Garden City vs. Massapequa in Week 3.
Garden City possesses the nation's longest active winning streak at 66 games, a span that has earned the Trojans five consecutive Long Island Championships. Meanwhile, Massapequa is riding a 23-game winning streak and three straight Long Island Championships.
Change coming in Section 2
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany announced last week that students attending Catholic Central School in Latham will be
moved to Notre Dame-Bishop Gibbons in Schenectady.
"This is a difficult, but necessary decision, that I believe will help us to strengthen both schools moving forward," said Bishop Mark O'Connell. "I am suggesting a model that I have seen work wonderfully while I served in the Archdiocese of Boston."
Catholic Central has 22 students in grades 8-11 who would switch schools. Catholic Central will continue to serve students in pre-K through eighth grade, while Notre Dame-Bishop Gibbons will house students in grades 6-12.
Catholic Central opened in 2022 after Saint Ambrose School in Latham and Catholic Central High School in Lansingburgh merged.
Suffern coach goes out on a winning note
Suffern completes a three-peat in NYSPHSAA Division I hockey on Sunday by defeating Canton 5-2 in Buffalo.
Sean Tyrrell, who scored five goals a day earlier in the Mounties' semifinal win against Pittsford, was named the MVP of the state final four for the third straight year.
The state championship was the fifth for Suffern's Rob Schelling, who confirmed he is retiring from coaching after 30 seasons.
"These kids earned it," Schelling said after the Canton game. "It's a special group that just kept getting better. We didn't let a couple of losses at the end of the year bother us. They worked really hard from the pre-season to now."
Grand Island conducting investigation
Grand Island school administrators are investigating whether anyone associated with the boys basketball team is connected to antisemitic social media posts that targeted Lewiston-Porter High School and its boys basketball team.
According to The Buffalo News, two Instagram posts containing anti-Jewish slurs circulated widely before the rival programs met March 5 in A Section 6 tournament game.
One of the Instagram posts came from an account with extensive posts of photos of players taken inside school buildings.
Grand Island Superintendent Brian Graham denounced the posts and vowed to find whoever was responsible. Lew-Port Superintendent Paul Casseri said Grand Island officials have kept in contact with his district.
Grand Island defeated Lew-Port 63-39. The game was incident-free other than the Lew-Port student section chanting that a member of the Grand Island team was racist, the paper reported.
