imprisonment,
MidHudsonNews.com reported.
The alleged acts were committed against a 15-year-old Putnam County girl.
Menchen formerly worked as a physical education teacher and varsity baseball coach at Somers JFK. Police said it was there that he befriended the girl during the 2005-2006 school year. He reportedly left the school in the summer of 2006 and took a job as a teacher’s assistant at Rye Neck.
Menchen was charged with sexual abuse in the third degree, endangering the welfare of a child and unlawful imprisonment in the second degree. He was arraigned and remanded to the Putnam County Jail in lieu of $15,000 cash bail.
Football player shot: Fort Hamilton two-way lineman Christopher Williams, 15, was shot multiple times inside his Bedford-Stuyvesant housing project this week.
Fort Hamilton coach Vincent Laino said Williams had his right leg amputated at the knee down due to the severity of the wounds. He remains hospitalized.
"Chris is the type of kid you would love to be your son," Laino told The Daily News. "He's such a great kid. He had an 87 average. I've had teachers come to my office crying all week. We're praying for him."
Alcohol infractions: Dozens of students, many of them athletes, are serving suspensions for drinking alcohol during parties in at least three different incidents in Erie County last weekend, The Buffalo News reported.
A Grand Island birthday party last Saturday got out of hand, attracting at least 70 teens. The same night, 34 underage Lake Shore drinkers were at a house party in Evans, and eight Cheektowaga JFK students showed up drunk to the homecoming dance in Sloan.
"The rules exist to protect and prevent rather than to punish," Grand Island Superintendent Robert W. Christmann told the newspaper. "We’re trying to give our students an opportunity to say no to their peers. It’s hard to do sometimes."
Fifteen of the Evans house-party drinkers were Lake Shore cheerleaders, and athletes from other sports were also present. At Grand Island, 19 athletes were docked 20 percent of the fall season.
At Cheektowaga JFK, an off-duty police officer who was providing security administered alcohol breath tests. Six athletes were given 30-day suspensions from extracurricular activities.
Upon further review . . . No: Referee Tom Finan says he has reviewed Eldred's game tape and doesn't see enough evidence to change his mind. So the Times Herald-Record reports he's standing by his call Saturday that ruled Eldred's second extra point no good.
The scoreboard operator, believing Finan called the kick a conversion, posted the score as 14-0. Finan later had the operator remove one point, and Chester went on to win 14-13. (Earlier story)
NCAA changes rule: Cross country and track runners can no longer participate in the NCAA's early-signing period in mid-November, The Journal News noted this week.
According to the National Letter of Intent web site, "the early signing period in track and field/cross county has been eliminated, effective immediately."
This, of course, benefits college coaches far more than it does the athletes. With precious little scholasrhip money to hand out, the coaches can wait until the end of indoor track season before having to formally commit to scholarships.
There will, of course, still be oral commitments made throughout the fall and winter. But those deals are non-binding, allowing either side to walk away until it's time to sign in April.
Extra points: All of the Advance/Newhouse web sites, including those for The Post-Standard in Syracuse and Staten Island's The Advance, were offline this morning due to a technical glitch , a major embarrassment. . . . Put the rumors to rest for now. Brooklyn basketball star Lance Stephenson is not transferring out of Abraham Lincoln to attend a prep school, the junior star's father told The Daily News. A subscription web site has been spreading misinformation on the subject recently. . . . George Beamon, who played basketball for St. Dominic's last season, has transferred to Our Savior New American.
Schalmont's Jessica Strang pushed her career total to 103 goals with four scoring shots in a 5-0 soccer win over Cohoes on Thursday. . . . In Section 3, Oppenheim-Ephratah has forfeited three boys soccer victories after discovering the team was using two fifth-year seniors. . . . White Plains has moved its home football games out of a city park over the municipality's concerns that portable bleachers without handrails were an insurance risk. The high school is undergoing a $7 million upgrade that includes the installation of an AstroTurf field and new bleachers this fall and winter.
