Leading off today: Upstate New York schools are turning gender in sports upside down this fall, with a pair of newspapers documenting twists this morning.

   The Observer-Dispatch in Utica tells the story of Sherburne-Earlville sophomore Hope Brown, who aspires to play Division I soccer and is trying to get better by playing on the boys team this fall.

   Brown, who stands 5-foot-5 and 130 pounds, was the starting goalkeeper for the girls JV team last fall but felt slow in club-ball competition this spring. She feels playing with boys would help her play the game at a faster pace.

   "Girls can be very fast too," Brown told the newspaper. "I just think the (boys) game is faster and quicker."

   Junior Caleb Brown, who has five shutouts for the 4-7-1 team, gets most of the game action in goal, but Brown gets time as a midfielder and forward. She's had two starts in goal -- both wins -- and has allowed just one ball to reach the back of the net.

   "She's just another one of the players on our team," S-E captain Nolan Fuller said. "We don't look at her any differently because she's a girl. She had an opportunity and she's proved herself."

   Meanwhile, Kyle Ray, a 5-foot-8½ male, is playing for the Horseheads girls volleyball this season, The Star-Gazette reported this morning.

   He had a team-high 12 assists in a recent match with Corning West and is more of a setter than a hitter. Ray, who has played club-level volleyball in the past, already had somewhat of a connection to the team as his sister Kiersten played there four years ago.

   Foreign footsteps: Keep an eye out for French exchange student Adel Reddad, a runner for the Brewster cross country team. According to LoHud.com, he has clocked 3:55 for the 1,500

meters, which puts him in 4:10 or 4:15 range for the mile -- which means the rest of the state might be running for second come track season.

   Reddad, 18, ran the Varsity 2 race in the Red Raider Run last week and completed five kilometers in 16 minutes, 58.65 seconds despite not having much of a training base this fall.

   Staying power: Jim Hoover and Dave Kelly won't have to introduce themselves to each other Saturday at Delhi. It will be the 36th time that they have faced off as football head coaches of the schools that sit 16 miles apart on State Route 10.

   Hoover took over the Walton program in 1976 and holds a 24-11 advantage over Delhi's Kelly. Walton is 4-0 and Delhi 3-1 this season.

   Big numbers: Traffic on NewYorkSportswriters.org the last two Wednesdays has set all-time records (yesterday's page-view volume was a new high by 34.1 percent), which I attribute to the launch of rankings in cross country and soccer on top of football, which rolled out the previous week.

   As always, thanks for your interest in scholastic sports and for stopping by here.

   Hoops notes: Peekskill forward Mookie Jones is making five recruiting visits in five weekends beginning Friday: Marquette, DePaul Syracuse, Rutgers and St. John's.

   Lincoln junior Lance Stephenson is consistently listing Georgetown, Indiana, Louisville, Memphis, North Carolina, St. John's, Seton Hall and West Virginia as top contenders for his services beginning in 2009.

   Extra points: The Post-Standard did a fun story Tuesday on Syracuse Corcoran cross country coach John "Motor" Hohm, who earned his bus drivers' license and now transports his team to weekday meets himself rather than rely on inconsistent service. . . . Kingston's field hockey team has yet to allow a goal this fall through eight games, all wins. . . . Vestal may have dodged a fiscal bullet as the cause of the leak in its high school pool was traced to caulking that has since been replaced.

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