Leading off today: Section 4 powerhouse Delhi is the latest football team sent to the sidelines by a player eligibiliy issue.
A note on the Delaware Academy website from Superintendent Carey Shultz on Thursday said the state's second-ranked Class D team has been ordered by Section 4 to forfeit its semifinal victory against Deposit-Hancock. As a result, Deposit-Hancock will play Tioga on Sunday afternoon. The final was previously scheduled for Friday night.
In his message to the community, Shultz said the forfeit stemmed from a rule with which administrators were not familiar. He said recent news about another district (presumaby Middletown) prompted Delhi administrators to review their program's status for the sectional final.
That would seem to indicate that Delhi ran afoul of the representation rule, requiring a player to be be eligible and available for three regular-season football games in order to participate in the postseason.
The superintendent's message said Delhi has filed an appeal of the section's decision. The postponement of the final to Sunday gives the section and the NYSPHSAA additional time to review the appeal.
NYSPHSAA shifts some girls soccer venues
With the potential for semi-nasty weather to blow through Central New York this weekend, the New York State Public High School Athletic Association has made venue changes for its girls soccer final fours.
With snow expected in the Cortland area, the Class C and D semifinals originally scheduled for Saturday at Homer High will now be played at Moravia High.
The Class C and D finals on Sunday have been shifted to Dryden High. Additionally, the Class AAA final will also be moved to Dryden.
All game times will remain unchanged.
Section 1 will go ahead with removing private schools from postseason
Section 1's Executive Committee is disputing the NYSPHSAA's authority to intervene in its internal governance and will proceed with implementing its recent amendment that moves private schools out of the sectional competitions that ultimately determine state berths.
The committee released minutes of its October meeting, disclosing that it has notified Albertus Magnus, Keio Academy, Ursuline, and Leffell School that they are out beginning next fall.
The decision to separate the four schools from their public school counterparts defies a NYSPHSAA appeals committee ruling in July that the amendment was beyond the scope of the section's authority under the umbrella body's constitution and classification policy.
Middletown hearing set for Friday
Middletown school district administrators will make their case before Justice Verris B. Shako in State Supreme Court on Friday in a bid to restore the football team to the Section 9 Class AA championship game,
News12.com reported.
The district filed its emergency petition Wednesday in Orange County, seeking to overturn Section 9's decision to end the team's season over the use of an ineligible player in last weekend's semifinal victory over Valley Central.
The case centers on a soccer player who joined the football team as a kickoff specialist and played briefly in the win over Valley Central. The district has acknowledged he did not meet a eligibility requirement under the NYSPHSAA representation rule.
Not that it has any bearing, but Shako is a relative newcomer to the State Supreme Court bench, having been elected to a 14-year term in November 2025.
A few notes, mostly about why Middletown's motion for reinstatement should be denied:
• I reviewed the Power Point deck shown to Section 9 ADs during the annual mandatory meeting conducted by the NYSPHSAA office staff on Sept. 14. The representation rule was covered in the presentation.
For what it's worth, the representation rule has been around for as long as I can remember. The wording in my oldest copy of the NYSPHSAA handbook (2014) is nearly identical to the current wording.
• Though the News12 story cites court decisions in two other recent cases as examples of successful challenges to NYSPHSAA rules, neither is relevant. A February 2025 appeal by six Northport wrestlers stemmed from inconsistencies in penalties for too many competitions that quickly prompted the NYSPHSAA to revise the rule. Three months earlier, Syracuse Institute of Technology had a playoff victory restored in an eligibility case related to how an ejection was handled.
Rather, the relevant case is a State Supreme Court ruling upholding Aquinas' removal from the Section 5 football semifinals for a violation of the same representation rule that has tripped up Middletown.
• The story also says the Middletown district offered Section 9 alternative penalties, including a promise of stronger eligibility checks. Was that also put on the table in 2019 when Middletown had to forfeit four early-season victories after using a football player who was both too old and had run out his eligibility clock?
One final -- and crucial -- point: There's not a single word in Middletown's court filing that leads me to believe the eligibility ruling should be overturned. On the other hand, it contains what should be a fatal blow. Paragraph 25 says the player in question completed his required 10th football practice on or about Oct. 29. That meant there was no possibility he could have been available for three regular-season games -- the crucial component of the representation rule -- at that point.
Had they been thinking, Middletown officials could have petitioned Section 9 for a waiver before sectionals based on the player being a two-sport fall athlete. I don't know if it would have been granted, but it would have shown a modicum of familiarity with the representation rule.
Newburgh superintendent is understandably miffed
As I mentioned in the previous blog, the Middletown situation only came to light when Newburgh Free Academy coaches looked at game film -- you know, doing their jobs -- from Middletown vs. Valley Central and noticed a player they hadn't seen before.
They were understandably curious and began investigating.
Consequently, NFA has been catching strays all week, and Superintendent Jackielyn Manning Campbell has had enough. She wrote a lengthy note to the school community on the district website and chimed in on Middletown's bid to be restored to the championship game.
"While we understand Middletown's desire to protect its athletes from adult mistakes, it is deeply disappointing that our own student-athletes and coaches are now being unfairly criticized and scapegoated in the aftermath," she wrote. "Our team is readying itself for the Saturday game against Valley Central and should not be derailed from its preparation based upon what might be imminent legal proceedings."
She went for broke a couple of paragraphs later, and good for her:
"Directing criticism at our program, coaches, and student-athletes for uncovering the rules violation by the Middletown team is a textbook example of deflection, in which accountability for one's own errors is unfairly shifted onto others. Our district and our students are no strangers to scrutiny, often through no fault of their own. To subject our students and coaches to any criticism for this circumstance is misplaced and shameful.
"I am profoundly disappointed in the behavior of adults—both within neighboring communities and on public platforms -- who have exacerbated the situation by taking sides without recognizing the clearly stated rules or the historical context of similar situations."
Boom.
Following up on the Section 5 drama
Tying up a few loose ends in the aftermath of Section 5's decision Wednesday to restore East/World of Inquiry School to Saturday's Class B football championship game, with the Eagles playing without 14 suspended athletes.
• Many drive-by "experts" have tried drawing comparisons to the early October fight in the closing seconds of Palmyra-Macedon's loss at Clyde-Savannah. In a decision that didn't reach the Section 5 level, Pal-Mac forfeited the following weekend based on an insufficient number of available players after suspending multiple athletes.
East's roster of about 45 players was always going to be able to withstand the multiple suspensions. The question with respect to the Eagles was primarily about whether they could/should be disqualified for something that technically happened after the game and wasn't entirely of their doing.
That leads us to this ...
• Understandably, the section's focus between Saturday afternoon and Wednesday morning was on East/WOI's status for the final. However, you can't have a fight without opposing combatants, and Monroe's degree of responsibility for what happened on its home field is going to have to be discussed at some point.
There's a zero-point-zero percent chance that it will be an easy conversation when the time comes. The Rochester CSD and some influential people in the community championed East's cause this week, and they may have burned through their capital when it comes time to discuss Monroe.
We've seen this before -- on the big screen
In a scene almost straight out of the movie "Friday Night Lights," three Oklahoma football teams settled their postseason with a
toss of a coin after all the tiebreakers were exhausted.
Liberty, Gore, and Central Sallisaw finished in a three-way tie for third place in District A-II-3, leading to the coaches coming together at Catfish Round Up at Exit 200 on I-40.
The coins for Central Sallisaw and Liberty ended up tails, while Gore's coin turned up heads. That advanced Central Sallisaw and Liberty into the A-II playoffs, while Gore's season ended.
The drama was streamed live on the Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association's Facebook page.
In the movie, based on the book of the same name, Texas schools Odessa Permian, Midland Lee, and Midland High finished the 1988 regular season with a three-way tie for the final two playoff spots. The coaches met at a truck stop for a similar coin toss.
