Participation has been trumped by the opportunity to earn scholarships, so high school sports in Michigan will change next year.

   The United States Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal in a case that began in 1998, letting stand a lower-court ruling that the Michigan High School Athletic Association's scheduling discriminates against girls.

   As a result, girls basketball will be moved from fall to winter, switching places on the schedule with girls volleyball. Golf, soccer and tennis schedules for both sexes also will be adjusted in the interest on equality.

   The original 1998 lawsuit had contended that the schedule limited the amount of exposure female athletes got and hurt their chances of earning college scholarships.

   Metal-bat ban temporarily derailed: New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg vows to veto a bill to ban metal bats at city high school baseball games, though City Council has more than enough votes to override him.

   Proponents of the ban say metal bats make for harder-

hit balls that can lead to injures. Opponents contend there's no scientific proof available.

   Dixon honored again: Christ The King guard Loren Dixon has bagged her second state player of the year award, earning that recognition from Gatorade.

   Dixon averaged 17 points, 8.2 rebounds, 4.2 assists and 4.1 steals for CTK and will attend UConn in the fall and be reunited with Tina Charles, who was Gatorade's national player of the year last season.

   The Gatorade boys selections have not yet been announced.

   Gatorade's national female player of the year is UConn-bound forward Maya Moore of Collins Hill High in Suwanee, Ga. She averaged 27 points and 12 rebounds on her way to being named the scholastic Naismith award winner for the second consecutive season.

   Moore led Collins Hill to a 125-3 record in her four-year career, with two losses coming to Christ The King.

   OK, so I may need a do-over on Friday's blog entry, the one that suggested there was evidence that not all is wrong with the world of major-college athletics. No, the Syracuse University lacrosse players mentioned in that entry have not relapsed. Rather, it's a report about another Big East program that's the source of my new discontent.

   Pete Thamel of The New York Times wrote a piece Friday that should have a lot of administrators at Georgetown asking very tough questions. Trouble is, they already had their chance to ask those questions but apparently looked the other way instead. As for a few folks at Binghamton University, well I'm sure they're second-guessing themselves a tiny bit about hiring Hoyas assistant Kevin Broadus as their new men's basketball coach.

   Thamel reported that Broadus and head coach John Thompson III recruited a player to Georgetown who compiled final grades of "F" in 12 courses while in high school in Delaware. In fact, Marc Egerson even failed gym class as a freshman and finished with a 1.33 GPA in core courses like math, science and English.

   That's right, he failed gym. Even I couldn't manage to do that, and I was one of the worst athletes I've ever seen.

   That's bad, but it gets worse for Broadus, who was introduced as the Binghamton coach March 26 before the Hoyas headed off to the Final Four. It seems he's done quite a bit of business with Lutheran Christian Academy, a Philadelphia prep school that has come under fire from the NCAA. It's been labeled a "diploma mill" by some, and the NCAA won't even accept transcripts from LCA any more. Before that happened, though, he regularly recruited the school's athletes.

   Egerson attended LCA to beef up his grades in a hurry and became part of Thompson's first recruiting class in 2005. He left Georgetown in January and has enrolled at the University of Delaware, which did not recruit him out of high school because of his transcript but accepted Egerson as a transfer because he left Georgetown in good academic standing.

   Georgetown president John DeGioia says senior university officials scrutinized Egerson's application last year after The New York Times turned up unflattering information about LCA. We assume DeGioia will draw some strange stares when he shows up for his next Knight Commission meeting. He was appointed to that

NCAA watchdog group in 2006, the Times noted.

   The Hoyas coaching staff will get a free pass on this one. They can argue that they took a chance on Egerson but the kid proved he could cut it in the classroom. Fine, but the admissions office at G'town still has some explaining to do. No way a non-athlete with an SAT score in the 600s gets accepted by those gatekeepers. More to the point, there's no way anyone but a basketball player gets in with that transcript; coaches in other sports wouldn't have the guile to try it or the clout to pull it off.

   Binghamton AD Joel Thirer seemed more than a little distressed last week when the newspaper described details of Egerson's enrollment. If Broadus is like a cat and gets nine lives, he may have used one or two of them without even have stepped into his new office.

   "Binghamton has never engaged in that type of behavior," Thirer told the newspaper. "If there’s a history of that, it certainly won’t be the case here. I can guarantee that. We just don’t want to win that badly."

   Big opening throw by Farrell junior: Monsignor Farrell junior Vincenzo Chiariello uncorked a throw of 59 feet in the shot put Saturday at an invitational hosted by his school.

   That broke a 1994 school record of 58-3 1/4 by Ed Diaz.

   Chiariello had two other throws over 58 feet for good measure. To the best of our knowledge, his best mark as a soph was 57-4 1/2.

   Progress report: OK, I'm now done tinkering with the front page of the site. Some of the elements may move around from time to time in order to keep the modular look, but I'm now satisifed that we have the most important topics and useful information precisely where they need to be.

   As always, feel free to send an e-mail if you have ideas for improvements or additional content.

   I'll now return my attention to adding more material to the reference section and converting the look of interior pages from the old format.

   On average, I run across one story a month that qualifies as a jaw-dropper -- something so stunning or fascinating that everyone in the business needs to take notice. Well, the March entry in the "Oh-my-God" reading material department showed up Friday in The New York Times.

   Bill Pennington filed nearly 2,000 words under the headline "Pom-Poms, Pyramids and Peril," painting a startling picture of how dangerous cheerleading has become at virtually all levels.

   More than half of the catastrophic injuries (head or spinal trauma) suffered by female high school and college athletes from 1982 to 2005 resulted from cheerleading, Pennington reported based on research by the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research.

   Further, the number of emergency-room visits by cheerleaders more than doubled from 1990 to 2002 as routines became more acrobatic and physically demanding.

   There is no uniformity of regulations nationwide and little statewide control, Penning reported, noting that some high school squads routinely do stunts that would be banned in the NCAA.

   "[M]ost states do not consider cheerleading a sport, so it is not under the aegis of a powerful state athletic association," he wrote. "Instead, cheerleading is labeled an activity, which often means it is regulated by the same state education groups that govern the chess, debate and French clubs.

   One more scary statistic: From 1998 to 2005, 25 percent of the money distributed by the NCAA's Catastrophic

Injury Insurance Program was related to cheerleading mishaps. That made it second only to football -- which had more than eight times as many participants.

   New York, by the way, is one of the states in which the major governing organization -- the New York State Public High School Athletic Association -- treats cheerleading as an activty rather than as a more regulated sport.

   Yet another death to report: Clarence wrestling coach Jon Vesper died in his home yesterday at the age of 40 from unknown causes.

   Vesper had just completed his 14th season as a coach at Clarence. He was a two-time Section 6 champion for Clarence in the mid-1980s.

   Vesper leaves behind his wife, Jan, their two young children and a stepdaughter. Jan Vesper is expecting another baby in October.

   Helping Petrocelli's family: Fund-raising efforts are now in full swing as friends rally to help the family of Gregg Petrocelli, the Elmont girls basketball coach who collapsed and died during a Feb. 27 game.

   'Petro,' who was 38 at the time of his death had a bout with cancer a teenager and was unable to get life insurance. He left behind his wife, Denise, and two young daughters.

   Contributions can be sent to: Friends of Petro Fund, Elmont Memorial H.S., 555 Ridge Road, Elmont, NY 11003.

   Bethlehem boys basketball coach Jeremy Klugman has died, The Times Union in Albany reported early today.

   Klugman, who was in his late 30s, taught physical education at Bethlehem Middle School. He also coached boys JV tennis.

   Few details of Klugman's death were immediately available, though a note on the Bethlehem Central School District Web site announced his death.

   "It's a good bet that most of the students in the high school remember him fondly," district administrator Michael Tebbano told the newspaper.

   The basketball team was 7-14 this season following a 5-15 mark a year ago.

   Crespi indicted, faces trial: Wallkill junior Jasmin Crespi will be in Orange County Court next week to face a felony charge of assaulting another girl after a high school soccer game, the Times Herald-Record reported today.

   A grand jury indicted Crespi, who did not testify, last week of second-degree assault and a misdemeanor charge of third-degree assault. She's accused of punching Cornwall junior Ashley Thorpe of Cornwall during post-game handshakes after their Oct. 31 game.

   Crespi, 17, is free on her own recognizance. Crespi's lawyer, Brandon Ozman, has contended his client lashed out in self-defense because she felt threatened on the field

that day. Thorpe suffered facial injuries including a broken jaw and a fractured palate.

   Lochte wins world championship: Wow, little Ryan Lochte has certainly grown up.

   I vaguely remember him hanging around poolside in the mid-1980s as a toddler with his father, Steve, who was coach of the MCC Marauders age-group swim program. Well, the 2004 Olympic silver medalist re-emerged yesterday as a record-setting world champion who upstaged the incomparable Michael Phelps.

   Lochte broke Aaron Peirsol's seven-year winning streak in the 200-meter backstroke and grabbed his first major international championship in world-record time at the world championships in Melbourne, Australia.

   The winning time of 1 minute, 54.32 seconds trimmed .12 seconds off the record Peirsol set last year. Lochte, whose mother Ileana formerly coached the Canandaigua Academy team before the family moved to Daytona Beach, Fla., covered the final 50 meters nearly a second faster than Peirsol.

   Extra points: The New York Times did some digging and determined that Ruth Lovelace of Boys & Girls was in fact not the first women to coach a boys team in a PSAL basketball championship game (the 'Roos lost to Lincoln in the Class AA Division earlier this month). Noreen Begley was the first in 1992 when she coached Murry Bergtraum in the 'B' division final.

   If it's sincere, then the public apology by two Syracuse University lacrosse players might be evidence that not all is wrong with the world of major-college athletics.

   Starting midfielder Pat Perritt and defensive middie John Carrozza made the apology Wednesday. They had been arrested for disorderly conduct outside a Syracuse bar March 11 and suspended indefinitely by the university. They promised it would never happen again.

   "I realize that 'I am sorry' is not enough at this time," Perritt said in his statement. "I can assure you that my future actions and decisions will help to show people the type of person I truly am."

   Perritt, who had four goals and an assist in four games, said he is seeing an alcohol counselor and has sent a letter of apology to Syracuse police.

   Said Carrozza: "I am genuinely sorry for what happened that evening. I promise this will not happen ever again and hope to prove myself as a worthy member of the Syracuse community both on and off campus."

   It's pretty humiliating for a young man to stand in front of a camera and admit he behaved like a moron, regardless of whether the incident was fueled by alcohol. You don't need a vivid imagination to speculate that there was some arm-twisting involved in getting them to make the apology, but the fact they they did go public is still a positive.

   More changes to the site: I started making more adjustments to the front page of the NYSSWA web site last night and will continue tinkering with it through the weekend.

   Automated RSS headlines from more than a dozen New York newspapers have been moved up to the top of the page, replacing the daily report that we had been doing manually for the last 19 months.

   There are still a number of significant newspapers that don't offer RSS feeds or whose feeds don't make it possible to target just high school sports coverage. I'll continue to check those 10-12 sites daily to keep an eye out for news and enterprise reporting that might be of interest.

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