Leading off today: Red Hook's John Kuhn, the winningest girls basketball coach in state history, is retiring after 35 seasons, The Daily Freeman reported today.

   Kuhn, who informed his players of the decision on Monday, will be replaced by Pam White, a phys ed teacher with AAU and college coaching experience.

   Kuhn posted a 619-124 record and never had a losing season. His Raiders teams won 16 league titles and 12 Section 9 championships. Red Hook was 12-9 last season.

   Softball milestone: Jessie Stavola struck out eight and walked two in a no-hitter as East Hampton edged Shoreham-Wading River, 1-0, while becoming the first Long Island hurler to strike out 1,000 for her career in softball.

   Stavola has six no-hitters this season.

   Three-homer game: Eastchester's Dan Sorine slugged three home runs and carried a no-hitter into the sixth inning during a 16-0 baseball victory against Edgemont yesterday.

   Since losing eight of nine to open the season, Eastchester has won six games in a row.

   "I think our potential is limitless," Sorine tolf The Journal News. "Everything is coming together now. The chemistry is great and the talent is there."

   Not so cheery story: The Post-Standard reported on cheerleading injuries this week, focusing in great detail on a nasty knock suffered by a Jamesville-DeWitt freshman five months ago.

   National statistics show cheerleading is responsible for a disproportionate number of injuries among females athletes. Of 104 catastrophic injuries (causing death or serious permanent disability) sustained by female high school and college athletes from 1982 to 2005, more than half were related to cheerleading, according to the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research.

   Additionally, the NCAA's Catastrophic Injury Insurance Program found last year that 25 percent of its claims since 1998 have involved cheerleading, second only to football.

   "There aren't a lot of guidelines in place, because cheerleading isn't considered a sport," said William Brown, Jamesville-DeWitt's athletic director. "It's considered an activity. So we don't meet as a group and get directives from a state organization."

   Schools institute their own safety measures, setting standards for the use of mats and determining whether physicals are required.

   Extra points: I usually don't care for the practice of college coaches hiring the scholastic coach of a player they're either recruiting or have already signed to a Letter of Intent, but I'll make an exception for Tim Harris Sr. The football coach at Miami's Booker T. Washington High — USA Today's 2007 coach of the year — will be Randy Shannon's administrative assistant at the University of Miami. Tim Harris Jr. is an All-American middle-distance runner for the 'Canes, and another son, Brandon, is an incoming defensive back.

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