Leading off today: The basketball seemingly is back on Glens Falls' court beginning in 2028.
Meeting on Wednesday, the NYSPHSAA boys basketball committee voted 8-3 to support the Section 2 city's bid to conduct the state tournament final fours at Harding Mazzotti Arena. The New York State Public High School Athletic Association's office staff also supported the Glens Falls bid over that of Visions Veterans Memorial Arena in Binghamton, which concludes a three-year contract next March.
The Binghamton facility won the current contract by a 12-10 vote of the NYSPHSAA Executive Committee after the basketball committee again supported Glens Falls but the office staff supported the Section 4 venue.
With the committee and the office staff concurring on Wednesday, the Executive Committee is likely to follow suit.
Glens Falls had a 35-year run as the tournament host until Binghamton won the contract for 2017-19. It's return to Warren County for another three-year run was postponed for two years by the pandemic, and then the Broome County facility won its second three-year contract covering 2025-27.
A return to Glens Falls would be a welcome development for media also covering the girls basketball tournament and for fans of schools that qualify both teams for the semifinals. Hudson Valley Community College in Troy is on pace for another three-year contract to conduct the girls tournament.
Lightning-fast work in girls soccer victory
Mechanicville senior Gianna Pitts scored three goals in the first 2:23 of Wednesday's girls soccer game against Greenwich. She finished with four goals in the 9-0 victory.
"It just happened so fast. It was crazy," she said. "I didn't really expect that to happen, honestly."
Even more astonishing is the fact that her three tallies came in a span of just 1:09.
"I shook my head and said, 'I've never seen anything like this before,'" Mechanicville coach George Dudas told The Times Union. "I mean, who scores a hat trick in less than three minutes? I mean, I haven't seen it, and I’ve been coaching for going on 37 years."
Pitts has 20 goals this fall in the team's 7-1-0 start and 94 for her career, including 35 as a junior.
Lots of football news, none of it good
Friday night's big Section 2 Class A football game has been canceled due to Columbia forfeiting to Troy because a disciplinary action left the 18th-ranked Blue Devils without enough available players.
WNYT-TV reported the forfeit stems from an underage drinking party last weekend, which coincided with homecoming weekend.
"We have been made aware of an alleged underage drinking party that took place Saturday evening at a residence within the Town of East Greenbush," a police spokesperson told The Troy Record.
The school district said athletes from multiple sports were involved in a violation of the district's athletic code of conduct.
A victory against 27th-ranked Troy would have given Columbia its first 5-0 start.
The Times Union reported Columbia started the season with a 32-player varsity roster. State rules require a football team to begin a game with at least 16 players.
• Jericho is forfeiting the remainder of its Section 8 football schedule due to a lack of healthy players, Newsday reported.
The Jayhawks started the season with 32 players but forfeited their opener because not enough players met the state-required minimum of 10 practices. They lost twice more on the field before calling off the rest of the season.
Jericho was schedule to play Calhoun this weekend.
• Nottingham football coach Will Hunter has been on administrative leave since Sept. 22, the Syracuse City School District confirmed to Syracuse.com. No reason was cited.
Jeff Petties is serving as the interim head coach.
Nottingham forfeited its opener and has been outscored 106-20 in three losses since.
This is how a larger NYSPHSAA football playoff bracket might look
With some folks a bit giddy over the success of the crossover games experiment in Section 8 and suggesting it's time for Long Island football to join the NYSPHSAA tournament, I mentioned in
the previous blog that Steve Grandin of the New York State Sportswriters Association developed a workable model a number of years ago that still holds up.
Football is a bit of a different animal because of schedule constraints; starting the season earlier or ending it later would be a tough ask at the NYSPHSAA and State Education Department levels, and playing mid-week games on shorter rest to condense the schedule won't fly either.
As Steve explains, the key to making it work is play-in games for the sections with the fewest teams in the five classes. Some regions have so few teams in certain classes that sectional quarterfinals aren't necessary; based on current BEDS data and proposed classification cutoffs, no play-in games involve sectional classes with more than eight teams.
Bringing Long Island aboard in the scenario would require placing 70 teams each in Classes AA and D, then splitting the remaining 310 amongst the middle three classes. The NYSPHSAA already routinely places hard caps on the largest and smallest classes in some sports to limit enrollment disparities:
- Class AA -- 1,130 and up
- Class A -- 730-1129
- Class B -- 468-729
- Class C -- 299-467
- Class D -- 298 and down
Private and charter schools that have been moved up remain in those classes, and this leaves merged programs as is.
While most sections would be conducting their finals in most classes in Week 11, state tournament play-ins that weekend would look like this:
- CLASS AA -- Sec. 4 (2 teams) vs. Sec. 9 (5 teams)
- CLASS A -- Sec. 4 (5 teams) vs. Sec. 9 (8 teams)
- CLASS B -- Sec. 4 (2 teams) vs. Sec. 9 (7 teams); Sec. 7 (1 team) vs. Sec. 10 (4 teams); Sec. 3 (8 teams) vs. Sec. 5 (8 teams)
- CLASS C -- Sec. 8 (5 teams) vs. Sec. 11 (4 teams); Sec. 4 (7 teams) vs. Sec. 9 (8 teams); Sec. 7 (4 teams) vs. Sec. 10 (3 teams)
- CLASS D -- Sec. 7 (1 team) vs. Sec. 10 (1 team)
Once play-in games are completed, there would be eight teams remaining in all five classes. Here would be the Week 12 state quarterfinals:
- CLASS AA -- Sec. 8 (13 teams) vs. Sec. 11 (16 teams); Sec. 1 (9 teams) vs. Sec. 4/9 winner; Sec. 2 (7 teams) vs. Sec. 3 (6 teams); Sec. 5 (7 teams) vs. Sec. 6 (5 teams)
- CLASS A -- Sec. 8 (18 teams) vs. Sec. 11 (16 teams); Sec. 1 (12 teams) vs. Sec. 4/9 winner; Sec. 2 (9 teams) vs. Sec. 3 (11 teams); Sec. 5 (14 teams) vs. Sec. 6 (10 teams)
- CLASS B -- Sec. 8 (15 teams) vs. Sec. 11 (13 teams); Sec. 1 (15 teams) vs. Sec. 4/9 winner; Sec. 2 (11 teams) vs. Sec. 7/10 winner; Sec. 6 (19 teams) vs. Sec. 3/5 winner
- CLASS C -- Sec. 1 (10 teams) vs. Sec. 8/11 winner; Sec. 2 (10 teams) vs. Sec. 7/10 winner; Sec. 3 (19 teams) vs. Sec. 4/9 winner; Sec. 5 (16 teams) vs. Sec. 6 (17 teams)
- CLASS D -- Sec. 1 (4 teams) vs. Sec. 9 (2 teams); Sec. 2 (5 teams) vs. Sec. 7/10 winner; Sec. 3 (19 teams) vs. Sec. 4 (14 teams); Sec. 5 ( Sec. 15 teams) vs. Sec. 6 (11 teams)
Here would be the Week 13 state semifinals:
- CLASS AA -- Sec. 8/11 winner vs. Sec. 1/4/9 winner; Sec. 2/3 winner vs. Sec. 5/6
- CLASS A -- Sec. 8/11 winner vs. Sec. 1/4/9 winner; Sec. 2/3 winner vs. Sec. 5/6
- CLASS B -- Sec. 8/11 winner vs. Sec. 1/4/9 winner; Sec. 2/7/10 winner vs. Sec. 6/3/5 winner
- CLASS C -- Sec. 1/8/11 winner vs. Sec. 2/7/10 winner; Sec. 3/4/9 winner vs. Sec. 5/6 winner
- CLASS D -- Sec. 1/9 winner vs. Sec. 2/7/10 winner; Sec. 3/4 winner vs. Sec. 5/6
The bracketing conforms closely to what exists now. Games adhere to geography, relevant because of November weather considerations.
Not insignificantly, the format preserves the Long Island Championships. It would be difficult to imagine Nassau and Suffolk counties coming along without that happening.
Equally importantly, the above scenario does not cut regular-season games. Rather, it trims a very small number of playoff games that, due to the numbers of teams in specific classes in specific sections, would have virtually no effect on high school players' seasons.
