Thursday, Nov. 23, 2006
Late November has been an odd time of year in the high school sports world in recent years, now that basketball and hockey kick off before football even finishes its season with championship games in Syracuse, NYC and on the Island.    And it's especially strange to realize that the best races on the cross country schedule are still ahead of us, beginning Saturday with the Foot Locker regionals in Van Cortlandt Park.    As is always the case, the front of the finish chute is expected to be well stocked with New Yorkers coming off another strong season of racing.    Tommy Gruenewald (Fayetteville-Manlius), Steve Murdock (Shenendehowa) and Brian Rhodes-Devey (Guilderland) rate among the leading boys expected to compete.    On the girls side, there are at least five runners who can finish in the top three on any given day. Figure on Saratoga junior Hannah Davidson as the closest thing to a sure bet, with Shelby Greany (Suffern), Callie Hogan (Bay Shore), Caitlin Lane (Greenwich) and Liz Sawyer (Honeoye Falls-Lima), fresh off a blanket finish for second last weekend at Federations, also legit contenders.    But Foot Lockers are only half the post-season story in cross country. Top teams across the country have an eye on the third annual Nike Team Nationals on Dec. 2 in Portland, Ore.    The Shenendehowa boys and Fayetteville-Manlius girls have been extended invitations based upon their performances at the Federation meet, but it starts to get dicey after that. Well, "dicey" is a more polite form of "ugly," which is how this deal is about to end up on the girls side.    You see, 16 of the 20 berths for each sex are allocated to the eight regions. The remaing four spots on the starting line are to be filled by at-large participants. Two of those at-large berths were handed out last weekend, and the other two will be announced this weekend.    Hilton and Saratoga deserve those berths, but it's unlikely that the selection committee will take two New York teams even though it's the right thing to do, as Bill Meylan argued quite reasonably yesterday on TullyRunners.com.		Here's what it comes down to: 'Toga (2004) and Hilton (2005) are the only two champions in the history of the race. They were the proverbial head and shoulders above the field last year. Neither is quite as strong as a year ago, but both are exceptionally good.    Their only flaw is that both lost to a better F-M squad on consecutive weekends this month. But the races were close. Too close.    If F-M comes home from Portland with the trophy, then I have no problem with the selection process.    But if anyone else wins, with either Saratoga or Hilton relegated to the sidelines, then it's a tainted title. The New York State Public High School Athletic Association will offer exclusive webcasts of all five state football finals at the Carrier Dome on Friday and Saturday.    The webcasts can be heard live or archived for $7.49 per game by logging onto www.nysphsaa.org or www.nysibn.com.    Matt Ryan of Fox TV in Albany will call all the games with an assist from color commentators from around the state. What are the odds that the Class AA football finalists would actually have a common opponent on their schedules this fall? Better still, can you believe that Auburn and Monroe-Woodbury each beat Fayetteville-Manlius by a score of 21-14? Kevin Witt had some fun with it, getting a nice analysis from F-M coach Paul Muench. We're grateful on this Thanksgiving morning to hear that longtime NYSPHSAA contributor Burt Beagle, who always has his finger on the pulse of NYC happenings, has been released from a hospital stint following illness and a hip injury. He's continuing his recovery at home. Good luck to Rob Potter, retiring after 26 seasons as coach of the Victor girls soccer program. He leaves with a 371-102-38 record and 18 Finger Lakes League division championships.    The Blue Devils, coming off their first appearance in the state tournament, will need to search long and hard for a suitable replacement.

Sunday, Nov. 19, 2006
The NYSPHSAA football finals are now set, with several intriguing matchups on the docket at the Carrier Dome later this week: Class AA, Saturday, 3 p.m.: Defending champion and top ranked Monroe-Woodbury (12-0) vs. an Auburn (9-3) team that simply refuses to die. Class A, Friday, 7 p.m.: Corning East (12-0), with its dizzying running attack, vs. Cornwall (11-1), whose only loss was to a quality Ossining team. Class B, Saturday, 6 p.m.: Albany Academy (12-0), averaging 42.5 points per game, vs. Geneva (10-2), whose losses came to Class A or AA teams. Class C, Saturday, noon: Falconer (10-2), unranked until winning its sectional final, vs. Dobbs Ferry (11-0), which has beaten everyone by two TDs or more. Class D, Friday, 4 p.m. Tuckahoe (9-1), with several close calls against a soft schedule, vs. Oakfield-Alabama (11-1), which routed its seven weakest opponents by a 322-80 margin. By the way, $10 for an all-day admission ticket was way too steep at PAETEC Park for football this weekend. Very few people attend other than to see their own team play, so it amounted to $10 per game for most fans.    I'm an enthusiastic capitalist, but charging that much for a high school event would have made me uncomfortable.    I won't even waste precious bytes with an extensive critique of the game program they were selling		for $5, but for the umpteenth time in a row the 10-page section devoted to NYSPHSAA records was lacking.    If you think I'm being too tough on the NYSPHSAA or nit-picking, just turn to the lists of career rushing leaders and career touchdowns. There's no sign of a kid currently No. 20 on the roster at the University of Michigan and No. 1 in the hearts of people at Onondaga Central School.    Trust me, guys, it ain't a real list if Mike Hart isn't at the top of it, usually followed fairly soon by Jason Gwaltney. Now that Aquinas has won the girls' Class AA soccer championship, we assume Section 5 will be forcing the Little Irish to play in NCAA Division III next fall.    You may recall that the perennial Class A sectional champs and state contenders were bumped up a class this season out of competitive concerns.    Perhaps Section 5 and the NYSPHSAA will come to understand that they are doing Aquinas' recruiting for them -- attend classes in a small-school setting (Aquinas' enrollment is at the low end of Class A) and play soccer against the best large schools. For those who haven't visited the site or heard the news, iHigh.com is out of the sports business.    What was once a promising sports site, with lots of current news and information, deteriorated badly over the last six years. It's now a bubble-gummish teen social network site -- and not a very good one at that.    What a waste of potential.

Sunday, Nov. 12, 2006
I'd been hoping to get a look at the text of the ruling before commenting on the recent decision by the U.S. Education Department's Office for Civil Rights, but the document doesn't seem to be out there yet for public dissemination.    Of course, that's not stopping New York school administrators from taking steps after the OCR ruled, among other things, that Binghamton-area girls basketball teams were being slighted because cheerleaders were not present at Southern Tier Athletic Conference games on a regular basis.    Already, ADs, principals and district superintendents across the state are reviewing scheduling policies. Nina Van Erk, executive director of the New York State Public High School Athletic Association, was planning to send a letter to all school districts to fill them in on some of the particulars of the determination.    Changes made in the name of equity, sensible or otherwise, are sure to follow. Title IX, after all, is one of the biggies for bureaucrats because the penalties for violations include the loss of federal funding. Understandably, that gets the attention of school boards and administrators immediately.    We're hearing of a number of instances in which it's been decided that cheerleaders will attend only home games played by the boys and girls basketball teams. Oneonta High, a member of the STAC, has already decided to go that route.    That in itself is problematic since it's going to mean that cheerleaders will be able to watch and interact with other schools' cheerleaders less frequently than in the past, but there is a multitude of other issues and questions that rate as more important at this time.    As Van Erk told the Democrat and Chronicle in Rochester, "Boys and girls sports need to be treated equally in all regards -- in any publicity, and funding, any support."    And that, I guess, begs the first question: Does the NYSPHSAA now have to start treating cheerleading as a sport rather than merely an approved activity?    The OCR determination was the result of a complaint by the family of a Johnson City girls basketball player that took note of the fact that cheerleaders were present at boys basketball games but not at girls games.    But good luck finding a reference to cheerleading in the NYSPHSAA's handbook. There's a standards chart that covers the number of practices required before an athlete can participate in scrimmages and games and spells out the maximum number of contests per season as well as the amount of rest between games. There are entries for every sport imaginable -- and then some. Even fencing and badminton, which barely exist north of Westchester County, are covered.    But not cheerleading.    And I can give you one exceptionally good reason why right off the top of my head: insurance costs. The NYSPHSAA notified schools this fall that there was a $53,000 year-over-year reduction in premiums paid to the Pupil Benefits Plan, an umbrella policy covering all member schools.    You can imagine how large the premium must be in the first place in order to allow for a $53,000 reduction. And then imagine how much larger the premium will become if the NYSPHSAA has to insure a state cheerleading championship tournament and/or factor in having cheerleaders present at four basketball games per week rather than two. If you haven't heard, cheerleaders suffer more injuries than just about any high school sport.    A friend of mine in the insurance business, who admittedly has no experience specifically in the area of insuring athletic events, estimates that could be a hundred-thousand-dollar proposition per year. Why is football special?    One of the more intriguing aspects of the ruling is the way football is treated with respect to cheerleading. The OCR determination singles out football as a unique sport with no counterpart for girls, thereby exempting it from the cheerleader equality policy.    Those words from The Associated Press story jumped off the page for me, because I've seen the "unique sport" argument put forward by colleges and universities with football programs. ADs at Division I football schools in particular tend to dislike Title IX because there is no women's sport comparable to football when it comes to expenses -- or revenue.    So a school with 85 scholarship football players, which treats its basketball, soccer, swimming and hockey programs approximately equally, has to go out and fund a bunch of other women's sports in order to balance out those		scholarships. That's why you're seeing women's crew and lacrosse programs, among others, growing at a rate completely out of whack with interest in the sport.    And if that's not enough to make the budgets equal, the ADs start killing off other men's sports such as wrestling and gymnastics in order to preserve football, which is expensive to fund but generates a lot of revenue at the ticket window and in the form of alumni support.    Requests for relief from Title IX under the guise of "it's a unique sport" have been spurned (I wanted to say "bitch-slapped" but knew I'd be looking at a record volume of hate mail) thanks in no small part to lobbying by the Womens Sports Foundation and other pro-equality advocates.    So, all things considered, shouldn't cheerleaders be mandated for field hockey games, tennis and swimming each fall to balance out the appearances at football games? Or am I taking things too literally? How far will this reach?    The complaint by the Johnson City family resulted in an extensive investigation of a dozen STAC school districts. The feds determined that inequities existed and negotiated "resolution agreements" that allow the school districts to make changes without having to admit wrongdoing.    Some of those agreements ventured into territory beyond the cheerleaders issue. Vestal, for example, was flagged because its booster club produced a boys sports program containing rosters and photos but had nothing comparable for girls.    But is that a supply-and-demand issue beyond the control of the boosters? The underlying reason for producing these programs is to sell ads to local businesses and other supporters. Some of that spending is done to be a good neighbor, but it's not unrealistic for the advertiser to expect some return on investment as well.    The boosters might print and sell 2,000 copies of the football program each fall, so $250 for a full-page ad might seem like a bargain. But will a business spend $250 to advertise in a program for the field hockey team, which plays twice as many games but attracts 10 percent of the crowd that football does?    My solution there is relatively simple, and many schools already do it. The boosters (or the athletic department) simply need to produce a single guide each season covering all sports. There's no reason that boys and girls soccer can't exist in the same publication.    But not all issues are so easily resolved, especially when the comparisons are more cut and dried than football vs. field hockey. Take cross country for instance.    You're not going to find inconsistencies in the way the boys and girls programs are handled in Saratoga Springs. Coaches Art and Linda Kranick have built a nationally ranked and respected powerhouse on both sides of the program. So when the boys travel out of state to a major meet it's a given that the girls will also be traveling.    There are, I'm sure, exceptions from time to time. Mid-week dual meets sometimes get scheduled in such a way that the boys might be facing three demanding meets in an eight-day span while the girls only have one. So maybe the boys skip a trip to Rhode Island. But, by and large, it all balances out over the course of a season or two.    But what do you do about programs where there isn't that kind of consistent quality? Would the Greenwich or Bronxville girls have to turn down invitations to the Great American Cross Country Festival next September in Alabama if their male counterparts weren't also able to run?    Similarly, I can name at least a half-dozen New York City schools whose boys basketball programs are vastly superior to their girls teams and are the recipiants of invitations to tournaments in South Carolina, Florida and many other out-of-stae destinations.    And, going back to the issue of booster clubs, what about the recent boom in spring-break trips to Myrtle Beach or Orlando by baseball and softball teams. Though the players generally raise the bulk of the money needed to cover expenses, booster clubs have been known to chip in $500 here or $1,000 there.    Does that now take the boosters out of the equation -- which, by the way, might not even be a bad idea?    I know, I've got lots of questions, few answers, and a certain amount of cynicism and criticism. But the whole world of high school sports was changed last week because someone wanted cheerleaders at their daughter's basketball game.    We live in a strange, strange world.

Saturday, Nov. 11, 2006
The door has been cracked open -- ever so slightly, mind you, but definitely cracked open.    As of last week, New York's transfer rule no longer slams the door on students who want to transfer from their local public school to a private school within the same district boundaries.    It mostly affects larger communities, somewhat leveling the playing field in open-enrollment districts like Rochester. But it also trickles down to small municipalities. In fact, the leader of the push to reform had Watertown in mind.    State Sen. Jim Wright, a Watertown Republican, jointly announced the change with officials of Immaculate Heart Central last week. They hailed it as a step toward fairness and equity. I prefer to think of it as taking back a piece of America from the folks who are incapable of making any case on the subject of recruiting other than saying they're against it because the other guys are obviously cheating.    Going forward, the New York State Public High School Athletic Association rule will now allow students to be eligible to play sports after transfering to a private school within the district boundaries of the public school where they reside.    Until now, athletes whose parents lived in Rochester were unable to transfer to Aquinas or Nazareth and still participate in a sport which they had played at Wilson or Marshall once they entered ninth grade. Poughkeepsie Lourdes, Syracuse CBA and the numerous other non-public schools across the state will benefit similarly.    At the very least it removes some of the stench from the multitude of penalty-free, public-to-public transfers that take place each year.		"For almost two years, I have worked with officials from IHC to make sure that parents are afforded choice when it comes to selecting which educational institution they deem best for their children," Wright said in a statement. "This choice should also be extended to athletic participation and this new rule ensures that those children who attend private schools are afforded the same athletic opportunities.” What has gotten into the football team at Auburn? A three-loss team that got into sectionals at the last minute because an eligibilty snafu knocked out another school, Auburn beat Union-Endicott, 39-7, on Saturday to reach the state semifinals in Class AA.    It says here that the dream ends next weekend against Rochester Marshall, but it's been a heck of a postseason run for the Maroons. As little as I generally care about the high school forums on Syracuse.com (or anywhere else, for that matter), it was fun to keep track of multiple football games the last two days courtesy of fans posting updated scores in nearly real time. Wow. Fayetteville-Manlius' victory with 67 points over Hilton (71) and Saratoga (73) in the girls' Class AA division at the NYSPHSAA cross country meet today does the impossible: It makes the Federation meet important for a change.    It's a certainty that the winner will earn one of the region's two automatic berths in the Nike Team Nationals, but it's not a sure thing that the second-place team will be invited.    That should make for some intense racing even before considering that Greenwich and East Aurora also began the week theoretically in contention for NTNs.

Saturday, Nov. 11, 2006 (Special basketball edition)
Nazareth Academy administrators aren't wild about their position on the court, so they're taking Section 5 and the New York State Public High School Athletic Association to court in the first key challenge to the revised policy that bumps successful private-school programs into higher classifications.    Nazareth went 23-4 and reached the New York State Public High School Athletic Association Class B final for the first time last March, losing to South Jefferson in the final.    With a classification figure of 193 students, the all-girls school with 230 actual students would seem to be a Class B school -- and a small one at that. Instead, the Lasers will be playing in Class A this season.    But the NYSPHSAA requires its sections to have a policy for the classification of non-public schools. The Section 5 policy to to evaluate every private or parochial school each year.    "They have decided to take a school with 230 students and have us compete against schools that have 800 students," Nazareth lawyer Todd Bullard told WHAM-TV in Rochester. "That's highly unfair."    Nazareth's primary point of contention is likely to be that only private and parocial schools are subject to reclassification. The policy evolved out of concern that schools without district boundaries are at an advantage in attracting students.    Section 5 may have to defend against questions about how that perceived advantage is different from school districts that allow non-resident students to enroll if families pay tuition.    On the other hand, Nazareth may be hard-pressed to show actual damage.    Neighboring Aquinas Institute had its girls soccer program moved to Class AA for similar reasons this fall, but the Little Irish won sectionals and advanced to today's state quarterfinals. Based on actual enrollment, Aquinas should have been one of the smaller Class A teams in the section.    The case will be heard Nov. 22. James Martinos has resigned as girls basketball coach at St. John Villa, The Staten Island Advance reported this week.    Martinos cited personal reasons,		including a change in jobs and his growing family, as factors. He was 147-88 in nine varsity seasons and collected a pair of Federation championships.    Though the metropolitan landscape is dominated by the likes of Christ The King, St. Peter's and a handful of public schools, eight Villa players have received basketball scholarships in the last three seasons.    Martinos has been replaced by Liz Blanchard, 29, Martinos' assistant the last six seasons. Lance Stephenson of Lincoln Brooklyn is the only sophomore on USA Today's preseason Super 25 boys basketball squad. He averaged 19.3 points, 8.6 rebounds and 4.1 assists as a 6-foot-4 freshman.    Somewhat surprisingly there are no other New York boys or girls named to the team. Staying with the basketball theme a moment longer, the two-day Big Apple Basketball Challenge will be a nice kickoff to the NYC boys season Dec. 9-10, with nine games pairing CHSAA against PSAL programs.    Brooklyn Thomas Jefferson vs. frequent national contender Manhattan Rice highlights the Saturday schedule at Hunter College.    On Sunday at Baruch College, the last of five games will be an early Christmas gift to hoops fans as Brooklyn Lincoln takes on Christ The King, with both likely to be in the USA Today Top 25 at the time. We're told the Section 8 is tweaking its boys basketball scheduling to do a better job of grouping large-school teams of comparable ability.    As a result, Uniondale, Baldwin, Freeport, Elmont and Hempstead will play each other in a double-round robin that will comprise the bulk of their 13-game Class AA league schedules.    In Class A, Jericho, West Hempstead, Rockville Center South Side, Floral Park and Westbury will get similar treatment in the top division.    LongIslandBasketball.com reports the alignment formula is largely based upon records from the past four seasons but leaves room for adjustments when teams are in rebuilding mode.