Sunday, Feb. 12, 2006
Add another chapter to the book about how kids often make more sense than adults. The latest evidence comes courtesy of officials at Kellenberg Memorial, who preferred to forfeit rather than play two CHSAA basketball games this winter against powerful St. Mary's.    I don't think I have to go into the full rant about the implied message, so here's the short version: We only want to play you when we're pretty sure we can beat you.    The actual message, though, was rather astonishing. It was reported last week when Newsday columnist Jason Molinet wrote about the situation, and it has the feel of something between amateur hour at the board of trustees meeting and a rookie mistake in the athletic department.    First-year AD Ed Solosky said Kellenberg sought the forfeits because school administrators believed their team couldn't compete with one of the state's better teams. But the letter that Solosky sent to players' parents, as quoted in the Newsday piece, had a "holier that than" tone to it.    Check it out:    "Kellenberg Memorial is committed to a sane athletic program for its students. It eschews recruiting, overemphasis and exaggerated expectations. It works to counter the prevailing atmosphere that pervades so many sports programs, from professional to collegiate to high school to Little League. Kellenberg Memorial High School basketball is only a game."    You think the folks at St. Mary's aren't bright enough to recognize a slap in the face when they see one? As Molinet points out, Kellenberg's football team was 0-8 last fall but still took the field against powerful St. Anthony's and absorbed a 49-0 spanking. So this sounds like a problem between two particular schools, which should have been settled behind closed doors.    I'm not advocating Murry Bergtraum-like unsportsmanlike behavior, especially if it means inflicting pain on teenagers, but I won't have much of a problem with St. Mary's leaving its starters in the game an extra two minutes against Kellenberg to turn a 79-58 victory next winter into something closer to 86-53.    Maybe that will be enough to keep Kellenberg folks from running their mouths. Hornell is the latest school forced to deal with underage drinking. District officials as well as police have been investigating what happened at a house party two		weekends ago. Four adults have been charged with 50 counts apiece of unlawfully dealing with a child -- a Class A misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail, a fine of $1,000 or both. Numerous students, including several athletes, are likely to be ticketed.    AD Gene Mastin estimated last week that 15-20 winter sport athletes are facing two-week suspensions. New Jersey's state assembly approved by a 60-18 margin a bill that would force the state's major high school association to let parents of athletes watch playoff games for free.    The bill also would limit how much the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association can charge other fans and how much it could raise dues. The bill now goes to New Jersey's Senate.    The NJSIAA was the subject of unflattering newspaper articles last year as The Record of Bergen County exposed lavish spending. The paper said six association directors earned up to $142,744 a year.    Technically, the NJSIAA is a private organization and can't be directly regulated. But the bill requires the state's 360 public schools to withdraw if the association does not abide by the terms of the bill should it become law.    The NJSIAA conducts championships in 31 sports, with football, basketball, wrestling and track generating almost two-thirds of its $2.4 million in revenue. Seeing which way the political wind was blowing, the NJSIAA cut prices for football playoffs in the fall.    According to The Associated Press, additional price reductions could make the total cost of changes this school year about $450,000. There was a good notebook item by Kevin Devaney Jr. of The Journal News last week pointing out that Section 1's playoff requirements -- similar to what several other sections use -- encourage cupcake scheduling.    Section 1 requires teams to finish with a record of .500 or better in their league, their conference or overall in order to qualify for sectionals. As Devaney notes, the rule encourages coaches to schedule sure wins rather than challenge their players with strong competition.    In basketball, there will be 11-9 teams that got fat on a diet of 3-17 cupcakes and qualified for sectionals while superior 9-11 teams will sit home and watch because of early-season losses to state-ranked opponents.

Thursday, Feb. 9, 2006
Our thoughts and prayers tonight are with former Caledonia-Mumford football great Matt Cappotelli, who revealed this week that he has been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor.    Cappotelli, 26, rushed for 3,602 yards over the 1996 and '97 seasons for the Red Raiders before attending Western Michigan. More recently, he has been a rising star in the pro wrestling ranks, and his colleagues surrounded the ring Wednesday night as the WWE Tough Enough III winner and Ohio Valley Wrestling champion addressed the crowd during a TV taping.    Cappotelli first gained notice as a wrestler in 2003 on MTV's Tough		Enough series and was close to joining the national wrestling TV lineup last summer until he suffered a broken leg in a World Wrestling Entertainment house show match.    He has been living in the Louisville area recently and chose to make his stunning announcement during a show there. He said that his doctors told him that on a scale of one to four, one being the best, his cancer was a "two." He said he will undergo surgery, likely followed by chemotherapy.    According to reports, Cappotelli stayed at the arena for two hours after his announcement to sign autographs and talk to fans.

Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2006
Michaela Hutchison won the 103-pound class Saturday night in Alaska's wrestling championships, apparently making her the first U.S. girl to win a state high school title in the sport over a field of boys.    Hutchison, a sophomore at Skyview High School in Soldotna, comes from a family of wrestlers. Her sister, Melina, placed second at states in 2000, and her brother, Eli, won a fourth state title on Saturday. Rules changes by the National Federation mean that high school soccer players with facial injuries can now wear protective face masks as long as a medical release has been obtained.    Another rule change provides officials more authority. Rule 5-1-2 now states that "the jurisdiction of the official officially begins 15 minutes prior to the start of the game and ends with their leaving the field of play and its immediate surroundings." The officials now have the authority over unsportsmanlike acts before the opening kick.    I only mention it because the possibility of surprise red cards		reminds me of a favorite story from about 12 or 15 years ago.    Jeff Calabrese was a pretty fair distance runner for Spencerport High School, and he used to pick up pocket money by officiating youth soccer games over the summer. As sometimes happens, one of the parents on the sideline was getting a bit vocal in questioning Jeff's calls, and the young referee finally had enough.    He stopped the game and red-carded the parent, ejecting him from the park. Turns out that the offending parent was none other than Bob King, who was the Monroe County Executive at the time. Speaking of rule changes, the National Federation will now allow advertising logos to be painted in football end zones, adding yet another tacky element of pro sports to the once-pure fall pastime.    I'm guessing that Coca-Cola and Pepsi are about to get phone calls from the athletic directors of every school in America by the end of the month.

Sunday, Feb. 5, 2006
With anterior cruciate ligament injuries soaring at the same time that ankle sprains are declining, coach Richard DiGiacomo has come up with the idea of mandatory educational classes for his Rochester Junior Rhinos soccer players and their parents.    This month's program is an offshoot of a two-year clinical prevention trial by the Santa Monica Orthopaedic and Sports Medicine Research Foundation. Testing of about 1,400 female athletes showed that increased flexibility, strength and agility may cut non-contact ACL tears.    Athletic trainers at University Sports Medicine in Rochester reviewed the data and have begun to reach out to area athletes with guidelines for the area’s first program.    "I want to do all I can to keep my players healthy and safe, and to give them a leg up so they can take soccer as far as they want to, whether it’s playing for a varsity team or gaining a scholarship to college," DiGiacomo said in a USM announcement. "While the girls clearly know I think this program is very important, in the end, it is up to them to follow through with the stretching and strengthening throughout the week."    According to John Bernfield, director of the ACL program at USM, the key may be a variety of specific flexibility and strengthening exercises to help prevent an injury that has sidelined many high profile area athletes.    "Female athletes are at four to six times greater risk than males for ACL injuries, and approximately one out of every 100 female athletes sustains an ACL tear," he said.    On a national scale, that translates to about 1.4 million ACL tears for female athletes in the last decade. The most recent high-profile case locally was Mercy junior forward Betsy Jacobson, who tore her ACL last month, less than a year after		suffering partially torn meniscus cartilage in the same knee. Churchville-Chili senior forward Chatanie Williams also tore her ACL on Dec. 16 after opening her season with 70 points in two games.    Ankle sprains have decreased by 86 percent in the last 15 years while knee ligament injuries have increased by 172 percent. Bernfield said researchers are still unable to pinpoint exact causes, but they now have solutions.    "For the first time, we now have documented research that shows that specific stretching, strengthening, flexibility and balance exercises can significantly reduce injury rates," Bernfield said.    For more information on the injury prevention program, contact University Sports Medicine at (585) 341-9150. Kudos to New York Post columnist Phil Mushnick for pointing out that the National Federation high school record book glorifies hundreds of obscene scoring accomplishments in numerous sports without bothering to mention that virtually all of them came in lopsided games that should never have been scheduled or should have at least been cut short.    After all, do we really need quarterbacks throwing 10 TD passes in 95-0 games? I'm guessing seven or eight TDs in a 70-0 game would have sufficiently made whatever point the victors were trying to make. Saratoga Springs senior Nicole Blood is departing for the Left Coast earlier than expected. Blood, the distance-running superstar who has signed a letter of intent with the University of Oregon, is moving to California soon because her stepfather has accepted a job there, the Albany Times Union reports.    There's no direct impact on the Saratoga track program since Blood was taking the year off from interscholastic sports after a very successful career.

Thursday, Feb. 2, 2006
It didn't take a 113-point effort to help me decide who the New York State Class AA female basketball player of the year should be when our organization announces its all-star team in two months.    I have no say in the matter -- the decision will be girls basketball editor Perry Novak's call -- but Wednesday night's fireworks reaffirmed in my mind that the honoree should be none other than Tina Charles of Christ The King.    Murry Bergtraum senior Epiphanny Prince set a national girls record when she scored 113 points in a 137-32 win over Louis Brandeis in a Manhattan Class A League basketball game Wednesday. But there's more outrage than adulation in the basketball community, and it's entirely justified.    Prince broke the record of 105 set in 1982 by Cheryl Miller, who went on to star at Southern Cal. Lisa Leslie, who also went on to play at USC, scored 101 of her team's 102 points in a 1990 high school game that was called at halftime because the opposing team refused to return to the court.    By comparison, Prince had "only" 58 points in the first two quarters as Bergtraum raced to a 74-11 lead Wednesday. And then, inexplicably, Bergtraum coach Ed Grezinsky allowed his Rutgers-bound star to play the whole second half. He later defended the decision by saying he saw it as the opportunity for her to accomplish something special.    Some folks can rationalize anything, I guess. But we'll come back to the concept of "special" later.    First, though, let's assign some blame to the non-Bergtraum participants in this un-special presentation of The Prince and the pauper. Brandeis coach Vera Springer certainly makes the list. She admits that her team all but gave up playing defense in the second half -- but we knew that by the fact that Prince went 54-for-60 from the field and made only one free throw.    I assume that Brandeis showed up with more than five players. If the five on the court didn't want to play defense, Springer should have gone to the bench and put in five who were willing to hustle.    Putting on a uniform and representing your school is an honor, not an entitlement. Anyone who tanked it in the second half gets no sympathy from me, whether it be a high school sophomore or a 10th-year NBA professional.		At the other extreme of the talent and effort spectrum, Prince herself deserves at least a mild admonishment. She could have called off this farce at any juncture -- say, halftime, for instance. She certainly didn't rise up to the level of the Benjamin Franklin boys several seasons ago, when the Quakers' starters benched themselves for the full 32 minutes to avoid mauling a badly outmanned Rochester School of the Arts.    In truth, Franklin's coach "encouraged" his players to take the day off in that particular episode, but he was able to make something positive out of what adults like to call a "teachable moment."    That's a lot more than I can say for Bergtraum's Grezinsky, who'll never vacate my doghouse because of his role in this sham. Bergtraum made it to the top in 2002, 2003 and 2004 by winning Federation championships, emerging from the shadow of the fabled Christ The King program. That apparently cured them of any humble behavior.    Sachem North boys coach Mike Atkinson, who once coached schoolgirl legend Nicole Kaczmarski, was stunned by Wednesday's incident.    "You have an experienced coach on a national level and he should know better," he told Newsday. "You should never rub it in people's faces."    Bergtraum is third in USA Today's most recent ratings, having lost a close game last week to No. 1 Christ The King. I can only speculate that it didn't sit well with Grezinsky, who has sparred in the press with CTK coach Bob Mackey over whose standout player is better this season.    Mackey's team has had some easy wins over the years, but neither he nor predecessor Vinny Cannizaro ever allowed their superstars -- a Who's Who that includes Chamique Holdsclaw and Sue Bird and 90 other scholarship players over 25 years -- to run wild.    Charles is this year's star. The 6-foot-4 senior, who'll play for UConn next season, was by some -- emphasis on some -- accounts outplayed by Prince in last week's showdown at Madison Square Garden but not outclassed. She put back her own miss at the buzzer to clinch the victory and finished with 20 points and 24 rebounds.    Winners have a way of shining in the spotlight. Wannabees are too busy devising ways to steal the spotlight.