Leading off today: We're still a few weeks away from the NYSPHSAA setting its agenda for the quarterly Executive Committee meeting on May 6, but I'll wager a diet cola that one of the action items will be a vote to waive the seven-day rule.
That's the rule the prohibits athletes and teams from participating in school-organized practice or contests on seven consecutive days during the regular season. If the rain that so much of the state saw throughout March and into the first week of April continues much longer, a lot of teams -- particularly in baseball and softball -- are going to need to make up a lot of postponements.
The Executive Committee waived the seven-day rule at its spring meeting the past two years.
It's still early in the season, and there are coaches who go light on scheduling at the start in anticipation of foul weather or the expectation that basketball season could run long. However, a sampling of some upstate sections entering this past holiday weekend shows a lot of baseball teams have barely started:
• Section 3: 56 teams have not played and 17 have played once.
• Section 5: 37 teams have not played and 27 have played once.
• Section 6: 43 teams have not played and 19 have played once.
One needs only to look at the March precipitation figures to understand why teams haven't have a lot of opportunities to get outside yet. I sampled data from 16 cities and towns north of New York City (most of Long Island has been in line with local averages) and checked to see how far above the average those numbers are:
| |
Precip. |
Over avg. |
|
|
Precip. |
Over avg. |
| Buffalo |
6.33 |
+3.44 inches |
|
Geneva |
3.89 |
+1.49 inches |
| Rome |
6.38 |
+2.95 |
|
Corning |
4.44 |
+1.45 |
| Syracuse |
5.96 |
+2.92 |
|
Ithaca |
3.96 |
+1.18 |
| Binghamton |
5.91 |
+2.86 |
|
Port Jervis |
4.84 |
+1.18 |
| Rochester |
5.89 |
+2.40 |
|
Montgomery |
4.39 |
+1.14 |
| Watertown |
4.63 |
+2.26 |
|
Glens Falls |
3.72 |
+0.93 |
| Batavia |
4.67 |
+2.24 |
|
Albany |
3.90 |
+0.91 |
| Jamestown |
5.36 |
+2.20 |
|
White Plains |
4.17 |
+0.06 |
Following up
Kudos to
The Times Union for a 1,300-word follow-up to the news last month that Catholic Central's high school students in Latham will be moved to Notre Dame-Bishop Gibbons in Schenectady.
The announcement by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany came in the face of declining enrollment. Catholic Central opened in 2022 after Saint Ambrose School in Latham and Catholic Central High School in Lansingburgh merged, but there was a rich history, particularly in boys basketball, long before that.
Bill Carley coached the program to 323 wins and multiple league championships from 1943-66 in 1943. Don Bassett booked more than 250 victories from 1968-84.
"I expected it, but I didn't know it was going to be that soon," Bassett said of last month's announcement. "I knew things weren't good, but they hadn't been good for a while."
Added Catholic Central girls basketball coach Audra DiBacco: "It's been a part of my life. It's been a part of my children's lives for their whole lives.”
DiBacco's squad won a NYSPHSAA championship in 2024, one year after the boys team coached by Guy DiBacco made it to the state title game.
"Those things can't be taken away," Audra DiBacco said. "Whether a school closes, burns down, that's not ever going to be taken away from those kids."
Drastic decision in Nevada
Some Class AA football schools in Section 3 made
big news last month by deciding they will not schedule games against Syracuse CBA in the upcoming season.
While that was a blow to CBA, which had to fashion a statewide schedule to compensate, the net effect on Cicero-North Syracuse, Henninger, Liverpool, Rome Free Academy, and Utica Proctor was negligible. Not only could they fill the majority of their schedules by going about business as usual, they also retained their eligibility to play in the Section 3 tournament.
Shortly after the New York news broke, however, more than two dozen Nevada schools took a bolder step by telling the Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association they will go independent for the next two football seasons to avoid playing local private schools. One of the schools is Bishop Gorman, which has been a national power for a number of years.
In doing so, those Clark County schools took themselves out of NIAA league, regional, and state playoffs.
The schools' decision was the fallout from the collapse of a realignment/playoff structure for Class 5A/4A schools that would have allowed Bishop Gorman to play just one out-of-state opponent. The Archdiocese of Las Vegas reportedly was preparing to go to court over possible procedural errors in the realignment process, bringing changes to a halt.
Indirectly related to recent news
I've had some great conversations with people since the NYSPHSAA reactivated its Schools Without Borders
ad hoc committee and the Section 3 football schools broke ranks with CBA.
I also saw and heard some wishful thinking on a bigger-picture issue.
Though the idea in play at the moment is that some or all private and charter schools could be moved into their own playoff classes, several people are pushing the theory that the next logical step would be consolidating the NYSPHSAA, CHSAA, PSAL and NYSAIS into one governing body.
Logical? Arguably yes. Possible? Not in our lifetime.
Here's one reason I say that:
While tying up loose ends on the winter sports season, Clevis Murray of The Buffalo News hit on a point that has long been a head-scratcher for a lot of us.
After their local playoffs conclude, Western New York's top boys basketball team advances to the CHSAA Class A tournament while the girls champion moves in the CHSAA's Class AA bracket.
On the grand scale, that's a small quirk. But it speaks to a key fundamental difference between organizations: While enrollment numbers are the foundation of how the NYSPHSAA classifies teams, the other governing bodies align divisions based on recent performance, preseason projections, and sometimes just school preference.
It's one factor that ultimately caused the Federation tournaments in basketball to fail and why scant thought was ever given to Federation playoffs in several other sports.
Without considering all the other things that would have to align to make a consolidation happen, the classification issue alone is a deal-breaker.
