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Saturday, Dec. 24, 2005
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Who wudda thunk it? Lacrosse players are at the top of their class in terms of college graduation rates. That's the finding of a report released this week by the NCAA.
Numbers from the NCAA’s new Graduation Success Rate, which assesses students entering school from 1995 to '98, show that about three-fourths of Division I student-athletes are earning their college degrees, with that number helped by reporting methods that include data on transfer students.
Among men's sports, lacrosse (89 percent) and water polo (87) players led the way, followed by fencers (85), gymnasts (85) and skiiers (85). The top performances among women
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came in lacrosse (94 percent), fencing (93), field hockey (93), gymnastics (93) and skiing (93).
Basketball rates for men and women were 58 and 81 percent, respectively, and football clocked in at 64 percent.
The overall 76 percent success rate is higher than the federal government estimate of 62 percent, which counts transfer students between four-year schools as non-graduates even if they earn a degree at their new school and ignores incoming junior college transfers altogether.
The NCAA will release school-by-school data early next year.
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Thursday, Dec. 22, 2005
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Way to go, Academy of St. Joseph. The Brentwood school's girls basketball team broke a 50-game losing streak Monday by downing Smithtown Christian, 40-20. Their last victory had come almost exactly three years earlier.
ASJ, which has 225 girls in grades 9-12, also has endured a 74-game losing streak that ended in January 2001.
+++ In case you missed it -- and you probably did, because track and field is only an official U.S. sport every four years -- Irvington twins Casey and Scott DiCesare cleared 15-9.75 and 15-0, respectively, in the pole vault at Monday's Spiked Shoe Invitational at The Armory in NYC. Dyestat.com says Casey's mark is third in state indoor history.
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+++ Gotta love the Buffalo City School District handing out bogus report cards, as The Buffalo News reported this week, and then winning the Olympic gold in backpeddling and doubletalk.
School officials will survive that episode, I suppose, but the smart money says Saint Bonaventure won't be enrolling any Buffalo high school grads who show up at the admissions interview clutching a welding certificate.
The report card story is a bit of a replay of what happened to me 31 years ago. Jefferson Junior-Senior H.S. in Rochester mailed me a report card with passing grades even though I was enrolled in a parochial school at the time. That may have been my best chance ever for making the honor roll.
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Wednesday, Dec. 21, 2005
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I hear you can buy the www.JasonGwaltney14.com web domain for a (really awful rap) song these days, now that the former North Babylon football star has apparently washed out of West Virginia after one semester of missing classes off the field and holes on it.
With no one apparently sure whether Gwaltney even bothered to take final exams in Morgantown, he's reported to be heading to Nassau Community College on Long Island to get his act together.
If his career as a Mountaineer is over, then it was a spectacular crash-and-burn job by the 6-foor-1 tailback. After announcing his college choice live on ESPN News and boasting that he'd average more than 100 yards a game as a freshman, Gwaltney finished with just 186 rushing yards -- which I believe Mike Hart used to refer to as a solid game.
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+++ The Great American Cross Country Festival will move from Cary, N.C., to Hoover, Ala., next fall according to meet officials. If you're not familiar with it, the Great American always attracts a stellar field of top teams from across the country.
+++ Note to Keith McShea of The Buffalo News: Keep fighting the good fight, guy. Poke fun at the public schools over there until you finally shame them into scheduling St. Joe's and St. Francis in football.
All the moaning that Section 6 types do about "unfair recruiting" by the Catholic and private schools is so 1971-ish. Bottom line is there are a lot of coaches, ADs and principals too scared to take on St. Joe's, and the federation scheduling format gives most of them an easy way to avoid quality competition.
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Monday, Dec. 19, 2005
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My semi-annual high school alumni newsletter showed up in the mail Friday, reminding me that Aquinas has the coolest scholastic sports event in the country on its schedule next month. There it is in black and white -- actually, maroon and white:
Saturday, January 28: Boxing vs. Cincinnati Moeller.
Yep, that's right. Interscholastic, interstate boxing. It will be the third annual competition between the two schools. Aquinas has had an intramural boxing program, known as the Mission Bouts, for more than 70 years. There's only one educational institution in the country with a boxing competition that's been around longer. I assume you've heard
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of the University of Notre Dame.
I've been thrown out of a drinking establishment or two during my 43 years -- hey, I was somewhat young and somewhat dumb at the time (cynics can insert their own wisecrack here) -- but never out of an airport. Until now. The Section 5 Football Hall of Fame display at Greater Rochester International Airport, which includes a couple of pieces of my very own prose, has been evicted.
Fortunately I'm not petty or vindictive. Otherwise I'd point out that the last time I looked, Greater Rochester International Airport didn't actually have any regularly scheduled international arrivals.
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Sunday, Dec. 18, 2005
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Manny Rivera needs to be bold Monday morning, before someone gets hurt. He's been lucky at least twice so far this basketball season as police, school security staff and teachers have intervened to shut down haltime altercations at two boys basketball games.
Arrests were made the first time. Pepper spray had to be used so that an arrest could be made the second time. The trouble is escalating. It's only a matter of time before someone gets hurt. Seriously hurt.
That's why the superintendent of the Rochester City School District needs to bring back the "fan ban." It's time to clear the gym of everyone except the players, coaches, cheerleaders and parents, just like the city did nearly 20 years ago to clamp down on another wave of hooliganism.
It was a younger crowd causing the problems then, and apparently "adults" are the primary culprits now. But this much remains the same: We're risking the safety of innocent people who want only to watch basketball, cheer on their classmates and root for their school.
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They should be able to do that without fearing for their safety. But they can't. Not until Rivera and the city police, who by all accounts have done a great job responsding to trouble that had spilled from the stands to the court (no players were involved), and clearing the gyms in an orderly fashion, crack down and rebuild the process from scratch.
On Tuesday, it was six morons brawling at halftime of Edison Tech's game at Wilson Magnet. Five days earlier it was East High's game at Edison, as an altercation between two adults in a hallway set off other tussles.
East's players have already gotten the empty-gym treatment once, at the Lockport Tournament after fans from two other schools brawled in the parking lot one night earlier. It made for a strange, muted atmosphere that night. But the players and their coaches at least knew they were safe.
Now it's time for athletes from other schools to enjoy that same sense of security.
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