Leading off today: ESPN has moved into a clear lead in online high school sports coverage among national mainstream media with the official launch today of ESPNRISE.COM.

   The site integrates many of the acquisitions and original ESPN products from the past 18 months and is being touted as "a complete source for national high school sports and lifestyle coverage, as well as a community connecting 14- to 18-year-old athletes to each other, their sports passions and friends and families."

   Content comes from a variety of stand-alone sites and brands including Rise magazine, Girl magazine, HoopGurlz.com, Dyestat.com and regional sites focusing on scholastic sports in Maryland and California.

   Young athletes will be able to establish MySpace-like profile pages, create group pages centered on specific schools or teams, write blogs, and upload videos and photos.

   ESPN's press release says the site will launch with coverage concentrated on high school football, basketball, baseball, softball, lacrosse, volleyball, track and cross country. In addition, New York and the other states have dedicated content pages.

   Section 5 giant dies: Bob Thompson, the longtime media and public relations director for Section 5 boys basketball before stepping down in 1991, died Friday of an apparent heart attack at the age of 67, the Democrat and Chronicle reported.

   He was part of Bill Farrell's sectional and state organizing committees that resurrected the New York State Public High School Athletic Association tournament in 1978 after a 45-year absence. Rochester hosted the event from 1978-80.

   "Bob was Section 5 basketball," former state and sectional chairman Gene Johnson told the paper. "Bill and myself were credited with a lot of the success, but the real key behind Section 5 basketball was Bob. He would do anything he could to help those kids. He spent countless hours developing the programs and was a great person."

   One of Thompson's legacies is the annual Section 5 boys basketball tournament handbook, a 64- to 72-page monster full of statistics, photos, rosters for every team and records. It rivals the quality of publications put out by mid-major Division I college conferences.

   Thompson, a former BOCES administrator who served as interim superintendent at several Rochester-area school districts, was also a fixture in the media room at numerous professional golf tournaments in Rochester.

   Latest developments in Crespi case: The state attorney general's office has declined to join local prosecutors who are pressing a felony assault charge against former Wallkill

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soccer player Jasmin Crespi stemming from an October 2006 incident, The Times Herald-Record reported.

   The AG's office sent a letter to that effect last week to Orange County Court Judge Robert Freehill regarding the case against Crespi, who was charged with punching Cornwall player Ashley Thorpe during post-game handshakes in Cornwall. Thorpe suffered facial injuries that required surgery.

   Crespi faces misdemeanor and felony assault charges. The felony charge was filed under the 2000 Safe Schools Against Violence in Education Act, which makes an assault a felony if the victim is on home school property and the defendant is a visitor. Freehill dismissed the felony last year on the grounds that there was no reason to distinguish between assaults by enrolled and visiting students. He was overturned by the Appellate Division of state Supreme Court on the grounds that Attorney General Andrew Cuomo should have been notified.

   In her letter last week, the paper reported, Deputy Solicitor General Michelle Aronowitz asked Freehill not to draw any conclusions from the AG's decision.

   Ex-East Hampton star arrested: Michael Russell, a 2008 first-team all-state point guard for East Hampton, was arrested Aug. 14 -- the day he was supposed to leave for Angelina College in Texas -- Hamptons.com reported.

   Russell, 18, faces one count of burglary in the second degree, petit larceny, criminal possession of stolen property in the fourth degree and two counts of criminal mischief for intent to damage property stemming from a July 14 burglary, the site reported.

   Russell averaged 16.8 points and 5.5 assists as a senior on the 24-2 team that fell to Jamesville-DeWitt in the NYSPHSAA Class A final. Nearly half his 1,673 career points came by means of a school-record 267 three-pointers.

   Extra points: In reporting earlier this month the hiring of Tom Langworthy, 27, as Jamestown's football coach, the Post-Journal noted he is the 31st mentor in the 115-year history of the program. That averages out to less than four years per coach -- and remember that Wally Huckno had the job for 21 years before retiring after the 2003 season. . . . The Journal News did a good job last week explaining that Section 1's decision to start football practice on Aug. 18 allows them to ditch the need for three games in 11 days during the playoffs in classes AA and A, a grind that made reaching the state semifinals and title games an almost futile proposition.

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