Leading off today: Following back with some thoughts from Sunday's season-ending football tripleheader at the Carrier Dome in Syracuse:

   West Genesee (Class AA) and Bishop Ludden (C), nine minutes apart in Camillus even if you catch all the red lights, each earned a New York State Public High School Athletic Association championship. Rye capped the day by winning in Class B.

   West Genesee, which has been living dangerously for much of the season — five wins by a field goal or less — picked apart Monroe-Woodbury with pinpoint passing. Tim Moran threw three touchdown passes, and his 272 yards in the air put him over 2,500 for the season in the 42-21 victory.

   It was shocking to see how easily West Genesee was able to roll up 494 yards of offense and score TDs on six of its first eight possessions. And once the TDs starting raining down, M-W lost some of the most dangerous aspect QB Dan Scalo's game; the sophomore with 1,788 yards and 27 TDs on the ground was forced to throw more often and more dangerously than the Crusaders would have liked.

   The result was M-W's second consecutive title-game setback to a muliple-loss team from Section 3. And, with six of the last eight Class AA or A championships having gone to schools fom Sections 3 and 4, the balance of large-school power has shifted to Central New York.

   Ludden's first championship came by a 21-16 margin at the expense of Dobbs Ferry and was sparked by a go-for-broke opening shot, an 80-yard scoring pass play from Connor Sweeney to Wendall Williams.

   "After falling behind the last four teams we played, we wanted to see if we couldn't grab the early momentum for a change," Ludden Coach John Cosgrove told The Post-Standard.

   Dobbs Ferry actually outgained Ludden, 408-350, and pulled off a 15-play scoring drive shortly before halftime to cut the lead to 14-10. But Sweeney drove the Gaelic Knights 76 yards in the third quarter for another score, and that was the ballgame.

   Rye earned its 19-12 win over Chenango Forks with two TDs in the final 18 minutes to wrap up the tripleheader. Jordan Eck threw for 180 yards and three touchdowns as Rye brought home its second state title in three years.

   Say what? It's rare when a credible newspaper misfires this badly, and rarer still when the mistake is by the editorial-page staff. But The Post-Star really missed with its editorial today accusing Walton of running up scores.

   Here's the text from the Glens Falls publication:

   "Boos to the Walton high school football program, which has run up the score on every one of its 13 opponents this year, most recently blowing out the Ticonderoga Sentinels

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on Friday by a score of 64-6. Ti wasn't the first victim of this unsportsmanlike act of aggression. Walton has beat its opponents this year by an average score of 54-3, including winning nine games by shutout.

   "This is not the New England Patriots beating up on National Football League opponents. There, you're dealing with professional athletes and millions of dollars at stake. That's a whole different scenario than high school football, where you have kids -- 15- and 16- and 17-year-olds -- playing a game to learn the value of hard work and teamwork and sportsmanship. There is no reason for one high school team to humiliate another high school team by running up 58 points in a row before the fourth quarter, as happened in the Ti game.

   "You tell your players to take it easy when the game is well in hand. You rotate in your third string. You run plays that don't get you a lot of yardage. You kick the extra point rather than go for the 2-point conversion. You run out of bounds instead of striving for that extra few yards. You punt or kick field goals rather than go for 6 every time. No one wins when one team humiliates another in this manner -- no matter which end of the score you're on. "

   I'm sorry, but Walton did the nearly impossible this year by scoring 700-plus points in 13 games and not have any credible observer second-guess its sportsmanship.

   With only about two dozen real varsity players, supplemented later in the season by about a dozen JV players, Walton was limited as to how many starters could be benched at any time. Still, the coaches found a way to get the ball into the hands of less experienced players, running behind less experienced blockers, for huge chunks of each game this fall.

   At last count, they had 15 different players score offensive TDs this fall, and Walton's backups were on the field so much that actually outscored a lot of teams for the season. Yet, one joke that made its way into my in box was that Walton's QBs were taking a knee so often that the ACLU was going to investigate to see if prayer sessions were being held.

   If there's an apology to be made, it should be coming from someone in Glens Falls.

   Two more get in: The Saratoga Springs and Warwick Valley girls cross country teams were given two of the four national at-large bids for the Nike Team Nationals on Saturday in Portand, Ore.

   Saratoga won the inaugural event in 2004 and finished second to Hilton in 2005.

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