Leading off today: There will be football at Mount this fall, but the basketball program remains on the endangered list for now. Boosters only raised $220,000 of the $300,000 that was needed to restore fall sports and activities, but Superintendent W.L. "Tony" Sawyer said Monday that the funds are enough to field varsity and JV teams in football, volleyball, cross country, swimming, soccer and cheerleading.
Middle schools, which have competed in interscholastic leagues in the past, will have intramural compeition instead.
The district has said about $950,000 is needed to cover the full year of sports and that coaching vacancies remain unfilled. No deadline has been set for the winter, Sawyer said.
"They say you have to take some time to smell the roses, and I really think we need to do that because we were so apprehensive about the fall," Donna Pirro, who was reassigned from AD to assistant principal, told The Journal News.
New NYSPHSAA officers: Patrick Pizzarelli, director of athletics, health and physical education for Lawrence Public Schools, has been named the NYSPHSAA's 44th president effective Sept. 1 in a vote of the organization's Central Committee.
He replaces Dr. Ron Black, who stepped down at the New York State Public High School Athletic Association's annual summer meeting last week.
Mark Ward, superintendent for Ellicottville, was named first vice president. Eileen Troy, AD at Greenwich, will be second vice president.
Wilson update: The Buffalo News reported over the weekend that a Wilson baseball player asked school personnel to stop sexual-themed hazing but was told he would be suspended and the police called if he did not drop the matter.
