Leading off today: Ryan Chabus' interception with 1:50 remaining set up Luke Garguilo's 29-yard touchdown pass to Dylan Milio, carrying Massapequa past Garden City 21-14 in Section 8's much-anticipated football crossover game Monday.
The result snapped Garden City's state-record winning streak, the longest active run in the country, at 68 games. The Trojans had not lost since Nov. 30,2019. Massapequa has won 26 in a row.
An estimated 6,000 fans showed up at Hofstra University for the game, which had been delayed two days by Saturday's storm.
Chabus' interception and 20-yard return gave Massapequa possession at the Garden City 18. Facing a third-and-21 with :36 to play, Milio caught Garguilo's pass at the 14 and reached the end zone untouched.
"It was amazing," he told Newsday. "Catching that ball, running into the end zone, turning around and just seeing the entire sideline and all the fans going wild. It was unbelievable."
Another school pulls the plug on football
Coxsackie-Athens has pulled the plug on the remainder of its football season due to a depleted roster.
The Section 2 school's announcement came on the heels of the Riverhawks being unable to return to the field for the third quarter of the weekend's loss to Greenwich, The Daily Gazette reported.
Wow. Just wow.
Newspapers have gone through perpetual change since the day publishers realized the internet was for real and was here to stay. Some grasped that around the turn of the century. Others kept their head buried in the sand for another decade.
One of the offshoots has been the re-writing of job descriptions to reflect changes in what does or doesn't get covered. Music critics, reporters responsible for covering a single Fortune 500 company, and editorial writers have pretty much disappeared. City Hall reporters have become "Open Government watchdogs" responsible for covering a dozen suburbs, as if the impressive job title makes them capable of being at four town board meetings at once.
One of the more memorable moments in innovative job descriptions came a couple of years ago when USA Today created a reporting position tasked exclusively to covering Taylor Swift.
Mind you, nothing wrong the that. You go where the reader is because that's also where the money is.
With that in mind, check this out:
Yup, NJ.com has hired another high school sports reporter -- but not all high schools. Just the half-dozen private schools that dominate football and several other sports in New Jersey.
Speaking of interesting media news ...
Tom Konchalski was a legendary figure in tri-state basketball circles back in the day because he was the guy that college basketball coaches across the country came to for honest assessments of top high school basketball players. Several people have been credited with dubbing him "the only honest man in the gym," a tribute to the esteem in which he was held.
Scouts and scouting services were common back then, and there are even more now. What was true then remains true today: Some are better than others.
I mention all this because a recent development set off a firestorm.
Rivals, a longtime player in the business of assigning ratings to high school football and basketball players, was acquired last year by On3. As of last week, the company is offering high school athletes the chance to be evaluated -- and perhaps receive a ranking (i.e., "three stars," etc.) by a Rivals scout in exchange for money. They set the price at $499, with a current promotion dropping the price to $399.
"In football alone, more than 1 million boys participate in high school football, while Rivals has typically carried approximately 6,600 star-rated prospects across the senior, junior, and sophomore classes at any one time," the announcement said. "Rivals Recruits allows us to evaluate deeper into the talent pool and help identify athletes who may ultimately compete at the FBS, FCS, Division II, NAIA, Division III, and other levels."
The site states that the evaluation doesn't guarantee a minimal rating or star designation, but the optics are awkward to say the least.
A memory and a tip for young reporters
Two quick notes regarding the above:
(1) Tom Konchalski was a huge name in the business by the time I started covering high school sports in the mid-1980s, and he was the guy who gave me a confirmation on the biggest college commitment story that I broke (McQuaid star Greg Woodard to Villanova) for my newspaper.
(2) The only scouting service I ever subscribed to during by time covering Section 5 and then Syracuse University football was Tom Lemming's newsletter. Lemming is still on the job, and what gives him more credibility than most is that he spends an enormous amount of time on the road, dropping in at schools to watch tape and -- more importantly -- speak directly to players and their coaches.
It's not foolproof, but there is something to be said for looking someone in the eye and noting his mannerisms when interviewing them.
There's one more reason for speaking to prospects in person, and reporters new to the business can embrace this: If you ask a recruited player to list the colleges he or she is considering, the first one they name is the one they invariably are leaning toward.
They don't always land at that first choice, but it's almost 100% true that it's where they want to go.
