NYSSWA: New York State Sportswriters Association

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Leading off today: A Hilliard, Ohio, senior who tricked football fans from a rival school into holding up signs that together spelled out, "We Suck," has drawn a suspension for his mischief.

Kyle Garchar, a Davidson High student, spent about 20 hours plotting the trick against Darby High, inspired by an identical prank that Yale students pulled on Harvard fans in 2004.

Garchar created a grid to plan how the message would be spelled out across three sections of the grandstand when fans held up either a black or white piece of construction paper. Directions left on stadium seats led fans to believe the message displayed at the start of the third quarter when they held up the papers would read "Go Darby."

Garchar posted a short video of the prank on the Internet.

Davidson Principal John Bandow gave Garchar three days of in-school suspension and banned him from extracurricular activities at the suburban Columbus school for a semester. Two Darby students who helped Garchar reportedly received the same punishment.

NCAA approves aid to slain recruit's family: The NCAA will allow the University of Oklahoma to set up a fund to cover funeral expenses for the family of a slain football recruit.

Herman Mitchell had verbally committed in June to play for the Sooners, but he was shot to death last week in Houston. Oklahoma booster Adam Fineberg of Houston raised $4,500 to help the family pay the funeral costs before university compliance officials told him his actions violated NCAA rules.

Sooners officials petitioned the NCAA for a waiver, which was approved Thursday. The NCAA is requiring that the funds be collected and distributed by the school rather than a booster. Money raised in excess of the funeral costs will be donated to a Houston-area nonprofit organization.

Nebraska gridders disciplined: Three Carroll High School football players face a one-game suspension for making what the Nebraska school has deemed obscene hand gestures in a team photo published in the Carroll Daily Times Herald.

The photo, taken by the paper, appeared Monday. The newspaper blurred four players, three of whom were

making hand gestures and a fourth whom the newspaper judged not to be acting in a "respectable manner." The fourth player was not suspended from playing.

An editor's note accompanying the photo said, "The above photo has been altered to remove hand gestures displayed by four members of the team. While we considered not publishing the photo, we felt it was not fair to the 51 young individuals who conducted themselves in a respectable manner."

Blogging developments: We've posted new blogs in the last 18 hours by NYSSWA contributors Steve Grandin on football and Dan Enright on cross country. Steve looks back at Dan Reinfurt, who led Watervliet to a NYSPHSAA championship before taking his own life 10 years ago.

The Buffalo News, by the way, will introduce blogs from its scholastic sports reporters early next week.

That paper did something virtually unheard of on Thursday in the course of publishing its annual high school football preview. The eight-page (broadsheet) section had zoned cover photos. Each of the paper's five editions carried different pictures in order to highlight 15 players from throughout the circulation area. In an era when the industry is so fixated on Internet content and innovation, it's nice to see that much effort put into a print product.

In a similar commitment to emphasize high school sports, the Friday sports cover of the Democrat and Chronicle in Rochester has been re-branded as "Varsity" and is devoted to scholastic coverage.

That paper has also started signing up web users to receive an e-mail newsletter each Thursday that will include some content from my blog.

I'll catch up on some other changes to web sites in an upcoming blog.

Extra points: For the 43 or so of you who actually have access to it, ESPN360.com will stream Sunday's Aquinas-McQuaid football game live from St. John Fisher College at 2 p.m. . . . Mark this reminder on your calendar: The NYSPHSAA wrestling championships in Rochester next season will be conducted on a Saturday/Sunday schedule, March 8-9. The normal Friday/Saturday format had to be abandoned because a late-week convention just before the tournament has gobbled up prime hotel space. . . . A proposal to turn the NYSPHSAA baseball tournament final fours into a two-day event does not appear to have enough support behind it to make it happen.

9/05/24: New York's Week 0 football intrigue