Leading off today: The
Sayville girls continued an inspired march in girls soccer yesterday, scoring a 4-2 victory over Shoreham-Wading River to reach the Section 11 Class A final.
Sayville coach John Schroeder died earlier this season at the age of 64. The players have brought a folding chair, which has remained empty, with his name on it to games since. Had he been at the semifinal, he would have seen four first-half goals, including two by Dari Sellitti, in a convincing performance. Sayville is ranked 11th and S-WR fifth by the New York State Sportswriters Association.
North Rockland girls lose: Horace Greeley, ranked 10th in Class AA, won at No. 5 North Rockland in the Section 1 girls soccer tournament for the second straight year, scoring a 3-1 victory.
Greeley goalie Kristen Guernier made 12 saves.
Oops: Faulty work by the officials may have knocked Smithtown East out of the Section 11 Class AA girls soccer tournament Monday.
As a result, Northport won on penalty kicks, 8-7, and beat Smithtown West in OT the next day to advance to the semifinals against East Islip this afternoon.
Northport and Smithtown East were tied after regulation and overtime, and they remained tied at four apiece after the five-round penalty-kick shootout. Northport then missed its next kick kick and then Danielle Toritto scored for Smithtown East.
The game should have ended at that point with Smithtown East winning, but the officials allowed four more kicks by each team. Northport ended up with the 8-7 triumph and Smithtown East lost any chance of overturning the outcome by not protesting.
"Different (soccer organizations) have different rules," Smithtown East coach Danielle Solomon told Newsday. "The referees decided to do it that way and it wasn't the correct format."
Compounding the issue, the officials also ruled that only the players on the field in the second five-minute overtime were eligible to take penalty kicks, which Section 11 interpreter Russ Huber said is wrong.
Random football ramblings: It's very cool to see The Buffalo News blogging sectional championship games from Ralph Wilson Stadium tonight. That outfit, owned by a certain "Oracle of Omaha" who is known for his investment genius (Warren, thanks for turning me onto PetroChina stock in February; I've moved up my expected retirement age by three years) but has a history of shunning technology he doesn't understand, took forever to be dragged into the 21st century earlier this year but has been embracing technology at an admirable pace since then.
We over-reported yardage for Canandaigua senior Kaheem Gist in Sunday's blog. He actually ran for 285 yards (not 385) in the playoff victory over Rochester Marshall.
Newsday alum Jason Molinet has created the definitive preview page for the CHSFL Class AAA tournament.
One of the frequent contributors to the Syracuse.com forum went to the CalPreps.com computer rankings site and pulled down the hypothetical point spreads on this weekend's sectional playoff games. Here's what the computer projects:
Class AA
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Troy LaSalle 2 Guilderland
Orchard Park 19 Lancaster
Rush-Henrietta 3 Canandaigua
Cicero-N. Syracuse 1 West Genesee
North Rockland 10 Clarkstown South
New Rochelle 7 John Jay, CR
