NYSSWA blog: Another week, another school for Jason Gwaltney

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Leading off today: Another week, another school for Jason Gwaltney.

With word coming down from the administration that there was no way he could rack up the required number of credits to regain his eligibility in 2009 at West Virginia, the former North Babylon superstar has enrolled at Division II C.W. Post.

Gwaltney, 21, will have three years of eligibility, effective immediately, and has been practicing with the team since Sunday. He had been attending West Virginia over the summer in his third tour with the Mountaineers in between various personal, academic and minor legal woes.

"This will be where I hopefully get a pro tryout," Gwaltney told Newsday. "This is definitely my last stop. There is no more after this. (There's been) too much bouncing around."

Gwaltney ended his high school career in the fall of 2004 with 7,800 rushing yards, second in state history to Mike Hart.

Triche's choices: Jamesville-DeWitt senior Brandon Triche, the 2008 state Class A boys basketball player of the year, has narrowed his list of colleges to Connecticut, Georgetown, Georgia Tech and Syracuse according to The Post-Standard.

The 6-foot-4 point guard said he plans to make official campus visits to Syracuse, Georgetown and Connecticut. He said he would "probably" visit Georgia Tech.

Returning from a December 2006 knee injury, Triche led J-D to the NYSPHSAA Class A championship in Glens Falls last March.

New and improved: The Post-Star in Glens Falls has relaunched its high school sports presence on the Web. The new "PS Varsity" was rolled out this week.

Though sports editor Greg Brownell refers to it as a work in progress, the site is in pretty good shape. One goal of the redesign was to consolidate all of the links into a friendlier format on the home page. Game stories and roundups will archive to the site each night, hours ahead of the newspaper reaching the street.

Safety tips: The American College of Foot and Ankle Surgeons says football, soocer and basketball are the sports most likely to lead to sprains, broken bones and other lower-leg problems, and prompt attention can speed the recovery process.

"What seems like a sprain is not always a sprain;

Also available online

Section-by-section weekly football schedule (PDF)

Enrollments and classes for NYSPHSAA football (PDF)

in addition to cartilage injuries, your son or daughter might have injured other bones in the foot without knowing it," said Dr. James Good of Kansas City. "Have a qualified doctor examine the injury," says Good. "The sooner rehabilitation starts, the sooner we can prevent long-term problems like instability or arthritis, and the sooner your child can get back into competition."

Good, who is a Fellow of the American College of Foot and Ankle Surgeons, offers these tips for parents:

Have old sprains checked by a doctor before the season starts to see if the ankle might be vulnerable to sprains and could possibly benefit from wearing a brace.

Buy the right shoe for the sport.

Old shoes can wear down like a car tire and become uneven on the bottom, causing the ankle to tilt because the foot can't lie flat.

Check playing fields for dips and divots. Most sports-related ankle sprains are caused by jumping and running on uneven surfaces.

Begin by stretching and warming up. Calf stretches and light jogging before competition helps warm up ligaments and blood vessels, reducing the risk for ankle injuries.

Super-sized offseason: Victor moved from the Finger Lakes League to the Monroe County League beginning this school year. For many of the Blue Devils' athletes and teams, it means a step up in competition as Victor goes from one of the largest schools in one league to one of the smallest in the other.

But it also means an 19-month wait between seasons for Victor's golfers, who competed in the fall in the Finger Lakes but will now move to the spring season. Spring is the traditional season for most of the rest of Section 5, and that's when boys golf sectionals are conducted.

"Fall over spring, I see a huge advantage," Victor coach Paul Sanders told the Canandaigua Messenger. "Most importantly, weather conditions are superior in the fall over the spring. I believe a person that is talented enough to make sectionals isn’t going to need a spring season to prepare themselves for competition."

Sanders expects to lose several golfers to baseball next spring. The tradeoff is that he can pick up some soccer or football players in the spring who previously were not available.

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