Monday, March 6
We'll keep it brief today, just throwing out a couple of quick items worth noting: All sectional and state boys basketball brackets, are available in one easy stop, courtesy of wynssis.com. Got my first look at www.sectionxsports.com over the weekend and came away greatly impressed. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the future		of information online.    Newspapers used to dominate the world of niche information, such as high school sports. Now, the Internet has given everyone the ability to be a publisher on a very equal footing. You're looking at the future, folks. See it. Grasp it. Use it. Copy the content model.    And then figure out how to make the business model work.

Sunday, March 5
Message to all reporters: Click the link and print out Stephen Hart's story in The Staten Island Advance about defibrillators. You'll need it when your assistant metro editor comes around asking you to localize the story later this month.    Better yet, take the initiative and offer to write the story without first being approached. It's important stuff, plus enterprise reporting always looks good on your next evaluation.    Stephen did some digging and discovered a potentially dangerous "haves and have-nots" angle to the 2002 law requiring every public school to have at least one Automated External Defibrillator (AED), which can save the life of someone experiencing cardiac arrest.    Public schools are able to use taxpayer money to purchase the units -- which go for around $2,000 apiece. Catholic and private schools have to foot the bill themselves. It's what's called an unfunded mandate.    But it's a little more complicated than that. If they can afford to buy a pitching machine or new video equipment for the football team, then they should be able to afford AEDs. On the other hand, the political blowhard telling schools to pay for AEDs with proceeds from "a bake sale or a car wash" needs to spend less time holding $100-a-plate fundraisers and more time understanding that money is tight at schools that rely upon tuition rather than taxpayers. I forgot to save it, but there was a good article by Paul Rosano in The Hartford Courant recently pointing out that many statistics reported in print		and online are blatant lies. And it's all so unnecessary.    One Hartford coach said he dealt with 300 college recruiters in the last two years, and none of them ever wanted statistics other than a true height and weight. All they wanted was game film in order to judge for themselves.    I throw that out there as a tip to people who will be complaining about all-star team selections in the coming weeks. The picks -- whether it's for all-league or all-state -- aren't made based on statistics, so resist the temptation to add a few rebounds here and a few assists there to make your players look better. So, remember the kegger at Nassau Coliseum last month? Will any of the adults -- arena officials, members of the state wrestling committee, etc. -- have to sit out two weeks for being present at an event at which beer was being served? After all, that's the standard penalty that athletes face.    Along those lines, I hope the rumor about the NYSPHSAA having to pay $5,000 to turn off the beer taps isn't true. Nassau Coliseum officials should have anticipated the problem before a deal was ever signed and negotiated the cost directly into the contract. I'll bet other venues interested in hosting factored the cost into their bids and may have lost out because of it. As you can see, I got my laptop up and running again late last week. Can I just say that you can't beat the on-site service coverage offered by Dell. Yeah, it costs a few bucks upfront, but these guys are the best.

Sunday, Feb. 26, 2006
Well, the Jason McElwain phenomenon -- the feel-good story of the year -- is clearly out of control at this point, making it even more fun than it was when I wrote about it last week (see below).    Check out Mike Lupica's column in Sunday's New York Daily News. That's right, the star columnist of one of the nation's major newspapers chimed in this morning -- on Page 3, the most prized piece of inside space in the edition, no less. John Gotti's love child(ren) only made Page 4 and the goulish body-parts scandal follow-up only rated Page 6.    As Lupica notes, the story of the Greece Athena senior who went from team manager to basketball scoring machine in one glorious night, has been absolutely everwhere in the last week. Every major broadcast and cable network has featured "J-Mac" at least once, and some have aired it on multiple shows throughout the day.    I'm not sure I've had this much fun (in sports, anyway) since my girl Kim Batten set a world record in the 400-meter hurdles in 1995 and held on to the mark for an amazing eight years.    Jason, thanks for the fun and cherish the memories for the rest of your life. I see that the CHSAA has pinned into the red on the Dumb-o-Meter one more time. Once again, the organization has tinkered with classifications at the end of the season, bumping St. Dominic's up to Class AA in time for the boys basketball playoffs.    It is completely absurb to put coaches, players, fans and the media in the position of not knowing a team's class until late February. These are decisions that need to be hammered out before the season, not 20 games into it.    Doing it this way is a little like enrolling students in geometry, trigonometry and calculus similtaneously and then waiting until June 1 to let them know which final exam they'll be taking. Did you take note of the story out of Bronxville last week? Parents and boosters have raised $1.7 to help the school board install artificial turf on Chambers Field and put down a new track.    Officials want to begin construction in May, with the field ready by September. The average donation was a staggering $6,200.    According to the Journal News, Rye's field is also being privately financed to avoid having to put it to a taxpayer vote. Facilities in Scarsdale and Bedford also were partly financed by donations.    Maybe I'm missing the mark here, but I think you may be seeing the		leading edge of a new -- and good -- trend in the world of fiscal responsibility. Perhaps folks have come to understand that the average taxpayer can do only so much to help fund non-necessities during a time in which pension plans are getting gutted, wages are stagnating and the cost of health coverage continues to soar.    I think the Bronxville effort was probably too impressive, perhaps setting a prcedent that will affect funding of future projects. Maybe going half-and-half with the taxpayers would have been more fair.    In Section 5, the Gates Chili district got in under the wire last year by successfully pushing through a huge improvement and expansion project that includes a major upgrade of athletic facilities at the high school.    In recent months, however, Webster, Penfield and Fairport have all had similar projects shot down at the polls, and the common thread seems to be that residents felt too much money was being spent on wish-list items rather than necessities.    I've lived in Gates for 11 years, and last year was the first time I voted on a school budget issue of any sort. I cast a "no" vote, and my reason was simple. Some supporters of the project had taken the stance that our school district needed the improvements in order to "compete" with other school districts.    Well, the last time I looked, we had a de jure monopoly on students in the district. Either they attend Gates Chili for free or their parents spend a pile of money to send them to a Catholic school that funds its improvements through private donations. Either way, they're going to have to pay school taxes -- just like the parents of those private-school families.    For the life of me, I can't see how you can possibly make a valid case for this need to "compete." On the innovation and information front, newspaper-based web sites would do well to drop in on LoHud.com, the site of Gannett's Westchester-Rockland operations.    Folks down there have compiled their recruiting updates into a searchable database of college commitments and signings. Yes, it's mostly just a repackaging of information that's already been reported or is otherwise well known, but it's quick and convenient. Sorry for the sparse updates to the site of late. Work at the real job has been piling up, and I blew out the LED display on the ol' laptop on Friday.    I hope to be back to a normal schedule of updates by mid-week.

Sunday, Feb. 19, 2006
I had to consult a calendar the other day to verify that we were coming up on Presidents' Day rather than April 1, because I looked at the story on the Plattsburgh newspaper's web site and was sure that PressRepublican.com was playing an April Fools Day joke on us.    It turns out however, that school officials uncovered and (thankfully) put an end to regularly scheduled and very much unauthorized boxing matches in the boys locker room at Saranac Lake Central. The bouts apparently had been taking place for a lengthy period of time before any adults caught on.    Pardon the pun, but feel free to insert your own "punchline" here. Here are my top candidates:    (1) The activity finally came to the attention of school officials when Don King billed the athletic department $250,000 for sanctioning fees.    (2) Great. We've identified 10 more opponents that Joe Mesi needs to avoid at all costs. The death last week of Art Connorton recalls a hilarious story about the longtime Irondequoit wrestling coach who was so well known regionally and nationally because of his tireless work at clinics and competitions.    I'm struggling to remember the exact year, but I think it was around 1991. One of the high school sportswriters at the Democrat and		Chronicle did a story on Connorton, and reported "The Bear" intended to retire after the season.    Naturally, this set off a chain of events in the wrestling community as friends and colleagues started arranging various tributes in recognition of his great contributions to the wrestling scene. Finally, after three weeks or so of increasingly elaborate ceremonies, Connorton called the sports editor at the newspaper with a plea for help.    "There was some sort of misunderstanding," he explained. "I'm not retiring after this season, but people saw the article and think that I'm leaving. They keep giving me gifts at meets, and they're getting bigger and bigger.    "You've got to print a correction. I'm afraid someone's going to give me a car." The National Federation of State High School Associations Field Hockey Rules Committee has identified a growing problem and nipped it in the bud.    Effective next season, player-to-player or player-to-coach electronic communication will be banned, as will electronic communication between officials.    Good move. I for one was growing tired of players stopping in the middle of three-on-two breaks to whip out a cell phone and ask the coach whether to pass or shoot.

Saturday, Feb. 18, 2006
This was, to say the least, a trying week for me. There was so much going on -- both at home and at work -- that I barely had a quiet minute to myself the whole time. The pace was, to be honest, almost a little too overwhelming, to the point where I wanted very badly to just shut down mentally and tune everything out.    I craved peace and quiet and wanted to get away from it all, ignoring the world and leaving my assorted worries behind. If it involved anything more complicated than what to have for lunch, then I didn't want to have to think about it this weekend.    I made it a point to spend part of Friday night over a favorite beverage at a favorite hideaway with a friend I just don't get to see nearly enough, and it was a nice boost, a way to help put the week behind me.    I got home from my trip to the sticks just in time to flip on the news and see a boys basketball feature by Mike Catalana at WHAM-TV (Ch. 13) here in Rochester. And suddenly a good night turned into a great one as Mike told a story that seemed		too good to believe.    He reported the story of Jason McElwain, a student manager for the Greece Athena basketball team who was given a one-time-only chance to get on the floor during a varsity game and did way more than just score a token basket. I could recount the whole story of "J-Mac's" big moment in the spotlight here, but I don't think I could begin to do it justice.    Rather, I encourage you to read the story and watch the video (it's linked to from the top of the story) of the student manager-turned-scoring machine.    It's uplifting and reassuring, a reminder that sometimes we do things right in high school sports. As Athena Coach Jim Johnson told the Democrat and Chronicle that night, "It was one of my all-time thrills in coaching. That is why you do it."    A few more moments like that one and I know I'd be able to handle just about anything that life could throw at me. As it stands now, I'm already feeling ready for the coming week.