Leading off today: The St. Anthony's defense shut down a late scoring threat deep inside Friars territory and defeated Mt. St. Michael, 26-20, yesterday for a seventh consecutive CHSFL Class AAA football championship.
The deciding points came on a 39-yard option run by junior halfback Nick Mercurio with 4:37 to go.
The game was a rematch of last year's final won by St. Anthony's, 21-20. It was also payback from Sept. 22, when MSM pulled a 22-12 upset that ended St. Anthony's 64-game regular-season winning streak in the CHSFL.
The Friars took down MSM quarterback Jayson Holt on a scramble at the 16-yard line, three yards shy of a first down with 58 seconds to go in the contest at Hofstra. Holt finished with 20 carries for 189 yards and two TDs.
Sweet six-cess: The Eden girls volleyball team completed its perfect season with a straight-sets victory over Westlake in the New York State Public High School Athletic Association Class C final in Glens Falls.
The 25-17, 25-12, 25-11 sweep gave the Raiders (26-0) their sixth state championship. Heather Henry had 18 kills and Chelsea Hennigan, the only senior on the team, recorded 39 assists.
"We had lost six seniors from the year before and this year we only had one senior, so we’re looking pretty good for next year as well,” Coach Stephen Pierce told The Buffalo News..
Nightmare revisited: One of the alleged truisms of soccer is that the most dangerous lead in the sport is a 2-0 lead. Don't tell that to the players on the Webster Thomas boys team. It'll be a long time before they don't feel queasy while holding a 2-1 advantage over an opponent.
Thomas, 46-8-10 over three seasons, surrendered a 2-1 lead in a NYSPHSAA final four game for the second year in a row and lost the Class AA final to Vestal, 4-2. Matt Kristek scored three goals, including the winner with 9:54 to play, part of a three-goal onslaught over a 7˝ span.
Kristek finished with eight goals in his last four games and 38 for the season.
In need of a new attitude: There's a bumper sticker seen around town from time to time that says something along the lines of, "I'm not old . . . Your music really does suck."
More often than not, I feel the message is dead-on. But I'm also mature enough — notice that I didn't say "old" — to recognize that there are some generational issues in play here. Face it, the Spice Girls were definitely not the Supremes and Oasis is a pretty poor clone of Paul McCartney and Wings, let alone the Beatles.
Having said that, Pearl Jam, Nine Inch Nails and Linkin Park are just a few examples of acts from the last two decades that merit respect even though I don't necessarily "get" them. It's more than likely purely an age thing, so it's up to me to deal with it.
But there are other instances when, on the grounds of common decency or common sense, I will not relent.
One such case became an issue recently with one of the ancillary web sites operated by the Democrat and
