Monday, Sept. 25, 2006
The top of the crop in girls cross country will be split between two major meets this weekend, then come together for a major clash on Oct. 14. Both weekends, though, will go a long way toward identifying the proverbial cream of the crop.    On Saturday, Fayetteville-Manlius (AA), Burnt Hills (A), East Aurora (B), Honeoye Falls-Lima (B) and Elmira Edison (D) are among the schools scheduled to compete in the McQuaid Invitational at Genesee Valley Park in Rochester.    Also that day, Hilton (AA), Bayshore (AA), Holy Names (A), Queensbury (A), Bronxville (C) and Greenwich (C) are on the roster for the Warwick Invitational.    Look for the teams to be sprinkled across several divisions at each meet, meaning there won't be all-out head-to-head battles.    On Oct. 14, just about everyone who's anyone in New York will be at the Manhattanville Invitational in Van Cortlandt Park: Hilton, Saratoga (AA), Bayshore, Fayetteville-Manlius, Colonie (AA), Holy Names, Queensbury, Bronxville and Greenwich.    Again, teams will be split across numerous races, but -- barring weather that causes the course to get torn up -- there will be plenty of comparisons based on times.		Enterprise alert: Hey, reporters, looking for a story to work on during a slow week (yeah, I know there's no longer any such thing as a slow week now that you have Internet responsibilities tacked onto your daily deadlines), try talking to top area recruits about text messaging.    Student newspapers at Cornell and Syracuse have done pieces recently on the latest tech tool to creep into the recruiting process. It gave me an excuse to go back and read The Post-Standard's story this spring about Mike Paulus' recruitment.    After reading the three pieces, I'm more curious than ever as to how high school kids are supposed to find time to be high school kids anymore.    By the way, it's nice to see The Daily Orange and The Cornell Daily Sun doing original, recruiting-related reporting. If this isn't a record, it must at least be close: The University of Florida has oral commitments from six football recruits from the same school -- Lakeland, Fla., the current No. 3 team in USA Today's ratings. The PSAL has decided to use a 35-second shot clock for all its boys Division AA games this basketball season. The A and B leagues won't be using the clock until at least the 2007-08 season.

Sunday, Sept. 24, 2006
Congratulations to Collegiate's boys cross country team for scoring a victory yesterday in the Race of Champions at the Great American meet in Hoover, Ala.    The relatively small school on West 78th street in The City topped upstate powerhouse Shenendehowa, 59-93, for honors in the meet that attracts high-powered competition from around the country.    Collegiate grouped its first five runners between 11th and 21st place, led by senior Chris Williams and sophomore Dylan Trotzuk. Shen senior Stephen Murdock had the second-fastest time of the day. Nice work this morning by Newsday's Gregg Sarra for asking the question, "When is enough enough?" with respect to winning games by comfortable margins, particularly in football.    Some lopsided scores are unavoidable because turnovers and mistakes have a way of turning 35-0 margins into 56-0 even with nothing but reserves on the field for the winning team. But some programs, and their coaches, are beginning to develop unflattering reputations.    Greg had the gumption to call out Joe Cipp Jr. and his Bellport program as a leading culprit. Bellport has won 13 games by 50 or more points in the past 20 years.    Two of them have been by margins of 66-0 and 67-13 over Newfield since the start of the 2005 season. And Newfield coach Joe Piccinnini used to play for Cipp.    Next up on Bellport's schedule? Winless North Babylon. Plenty		of eyes are going to be watching Bellport's every move.    As we've written about a few times recently, Connecticut instituted a flawed rule this fall to address lopsided scores, and the coach of any football team that wins by 50 or more points faces an automatic one-game suspension with the right to appeal.    That continues to be a bad idea. Firstly, as mentioned above, sometimes turnovers and mistakes contribute to turning sound victories into lopsided scores.    Additionaly, setting 50 points as the standard now all but says its OK to throw downfield with two minutes left in a 42-0 game -- as long as you don't go for two on the conversion.    Connecticut has set a standard that's arbitrary and ill-advised. The votes are in for the Dumb Thug of the Week Award, and a football player from Layton, Utah, is the easy winner.    The 15-year-old high schooler will have to answer to simple assault charges for putting a thumbtack in his glove before shaking hands and high-fiving players from the opposing team Thursday.    Several Davis High players reported being jabbed with the tack, and one decided to press charges.    The unidentified Layton High student has been kicked off the team and could face further sanctions from the school if it's determined the tack was a weapon and that the incident wasn't just a prank against a rival school.

Saturday, Sept. 23, 2006
There was a good story in The Journal News last week about the emerging popularity of the spread offense.    Monroe-Woodbury adopted the wide-open attack style and scored 105 points in three state playoff games last November. Now, a bunch of teams in sections 1 and 9 are playing catch-up.    Rather than formations suited to three yards and a cloud of dust, the spread puts QBs mostly in the shotgun and splits four receivers out wide.    The hunch here is that the spread is more than just a fad. Coaches understandably don't like flinging the ball around on wet, windy days. But artificial turf negates some of the risk, and an increasing number of schools are installing Field Turf and other varieties of non-grass fields. The milk lobby has been working especially hard this month. I've seen a couple of stories recently about how chocolate milk may be superior to sports drinks.    That premise is pegged to a study conducted by Joel M. Stager of the kinesiology department at Indiana University. His study tested nine male endurance cyclists to see how fast their bodies recuperated after exercising and consuming different beverages.    I don't care what the results showed because I have one simple practical concern: Keeping milk cold all day at a cross country meet without lugging a dozen ice chests around isn't easy.    Warm milk tastes terrible and is in danger of going bad at any moment. Warm Gatorade may not be refreshing, but it won't send you to the hospital. Yesterday's game-ending brawl between Canarsie and Tottenville didn't do anything to help lift football's sorry status in New York City.    Tottenville was up 14-0 when the melee broke out in the first half. Witnesses said the battles between		players went on for seven to eight minutes.    Per PSAL rules, the game will go into the books at a double forfeit. The teams will both be benched next weekend as well. Senior Steve Sondericker's TD catch with 46 seconds left gave Penfield a 28-24 win over Rush-Henrietta last weekend and set the Section 5 mark for receptions in a game. The 5-foot-10 wideout caught 16 balls, one off the state record. The catches added up to 218 yards. I see that Syracuse.com has banned Section4Mike from its high school football forum for violating terms of service. It seems he had the audacity to catch the moderators asleep at the wheel, prodding them into deleting harmless threads and then calling them on the carpet for it.    Section4Mike definitely shouldn't have done that, but let's face it: The moderators on those forums have been chronic underachievers for years. Way too much trash is allowed there.    Then again, message boards and chat rooms are the vast wasteland of the Internet. There are only about a dozen thoughtful and literate contributors to the Syracuse.com football forum. I'd rather have to delete 200 spam e-mails a day one by one than spend more than 5 minutes a week reading the mostly mindless yapping that goes on there. Chaminade's Andrew Beinert, a fifth-team Class A all-stater, has committed to continue his basketball career at Holy Cross. Beinert was primarily a shooting guard as a junior but has some experience at the point as well. The Times Herald-Record reports that the Newburgh Free Academy boys soccer team has players from nine foreign countries on its roster this year: Columbia, Ecuador, Honduras, Liberia, Mexico, Slovakia, Sweden, Trinidad and Tobago, and Wales.    Any room for an American kid or two?

Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2006
The number of students playing high school sports increased again last year, marking the 17th consecutive year of improved numbers according to the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS).    Turnout increased by 141,195 students to 7,159,904, according to the NFHS's 2005-06 survey, which indicated that 53.5 percent of high school students participated in sports.    Girls accounted for 2,953,355 spots to set an all-time record. The boys total of 4,206,549 was the highest figure in 28 years, second only to the record 4,367,442 in 1977-78. The NFHS began tracking data in 1971.    Football once again topped the list with 1,071,775 participants, followed by boys basketball (546,335) and boys outdoor track (533,985). Basketball remained the No. 1 girls		sport with 452,929 participants, followed by outdoor track (439,200). Connecticut's first test of the blowout rule turned out OK. Bridgeport Central football coach Dave Cadelina's automatic one-game suspension under a controversial new sportsmanship policy was overturned Tuesday by an appeals committee.    Bridgeport Central had defeated city rival Bassick by a 56-0 margin over the weekend, triggering the possible disciplinary action by the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference. Central had raced out to a 35-0 lead in the first quarter and grew the margin to 49-0 at the half despite the liberal use of reserve players.    Even Bassick coach George Loughrey supported Cadelina. “He did everything he could not to run up the score on us,” Loughrey told The New York Times.

Monday, Sept. 18, 2006
Fundraising has started to help the family of Julio Fuentes, the Alfred University football player seriously injured in a Sept. 9 game against Thiel College.    The Friends of Saxon Athletics (FSA) announced Friday that they had begun work on behalf of the running back from Olean. Fuentes, a 5-foot-2, 145-pound sophomore, was blocking on a third-quarter kickoff return when he collided with a Thiel player. He was hospitalized first at St. James Mercy Hospital in Hornell and then moved to Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester.    He was listed in guarded condition over the weekend, and the extent of his neck injury has not been disclosed.    Donations to offset expenses not covered by insurance should be sent to Friends of Saxon Athletics, in care of University Relations, Alfred University, Alfred, N.Y. 14802. Checks should be made out to the "Julio Fuentes Recovery Trust Fund," an FSA spokesman said.    Fuentes was a third-team selection on the NYSSWA Class B All-Star Team in 2004. He was the third-down back as an Alfred freshman with 333 rushing yards and 22 receptions for 276 yards. Can the Mamaroneck Board of Education possibly be a little more insensitive? They'll be meeting tomorrow to discuss tearing up a park that was established to honor 99 area veterans killed in World War II.    The school district recently won a lengthy court battle over Kemper		Memorial Park, which was established in 1945, and is considering building an athletic field there.    There are some things far more important than sports, folks. Joe Drape's story about prime-time high school football broadcasts in Saturday's New York Times was fascinating reading.    In case you missed it, the highlights included: Boosters at Byrnes High in Duncan, S.C., (population 3,000) raised $320,000 for the JumboTron scoreboard/replay screen in their high school stadium. ESPN and Fox are doing a combined 21 high school football telecasts this fall despite the fact that there is more college football inventory than ever before. It appears that Nike is spending somewhere around $250,000 on sponsorship deals with 13 of the top 20 schools in USA Today's national rankings.    Just a thought, but the Nike money raises a bit of a chicken-and-the-egg question. Are these teams ranked because of Nike's clout or is the athletic equipment company involved because they're ranked?    There are no easy answers to that one, and I'm not trying to be critical of anyone in the process. But I've got to tell you that the idea of schools pocketing checks for $20,000 or so makes even a raging capitalist like myself a little uncomfortable.