Leading off today: Niagara Falls is going to have a big hole in its basketball lineup this winter. A 6-foot-8 hole to be precise.

   Junior Myron Respress has left the school to enroll at North Carolina Technical Preparatory School, The Niagara Gazette reported, citing a confirmation from Niagara Falls coach Giulio Colangelo.

   Respress came off the bench as a sophomore during Niagara Falls’ 25-2 season and is regarded as a top-tier Division I college prospect. Sources told the paper Respress left last week in search of a better academic environment. North Carolina Tech, where Western New York AAU coaching fixture Jeff Bishop, is on the staff, puts emphasis on core-curriculum subjects such as math, science and English that are essential to gaining freshman eligibility in college.

   The paper said A.J. Roberts (Niagara Catholic), Jamal Webb (Buffalo East) and Tyshaun Edwards (Grover Cleveland) have also made the move to North Carolina Tech recently.

   Change at M-E: Bill Dundon has resigned as Maine-Endwell's softball coach because of a new school board policy that does not allow school administrators to handle sports duties. Dundon is an assistant principal at Homer Brink Elementary School, the Press & Sun-Bulletin reported.

   Maine-Endwell has won three straight Section 4 Class A championships, going 44-24 since the start of the 2006 season. Dundon was 116-109 in 11 seasons.

   Eden on the rise: PrepVolleyball.com rates Eden No. 18 in the country in girls volleyball, making the Raiders the only ranked New York squad. Eden, coming off a 26-0 mark and its first New York State Public High School Athletic Association Class C championship after five "B" titles from 1996 to 2006, has won nine Section 6 trophies in a row.

   According to The Buffalo News, 6-foot-1 senior outside hitter Heather Henry (who verbally committed to North Carolina in the spring) is among the best players ever to come out of Western New York, and Eden might have five eventual Division I players on the roster.

   "Last year she already showed herself as one of the greatest impact players in Western New York,"

coach Stephen Pierce told the paper. "She really strongly impacts a game every time she plays, and she’s a gamer — when things get hot and competitive, she plays her best."

   By the way, Eden returns to Class B this fall.

   Girls soccer tidbits: Senior Chelsea Haight became Davenport's career goals leader in girls soccer yesterday when she completed a hat trick during a 4-1 triumph at Gilboa. Haight, a fifth-year varsity player who has tallied 13 times through eight games this fall, has 110 career goals, passing Jennifer (Wright) Henderson's school mark. She connected 39 times a year ago.

   Island Trees is for real in Class A. Christina Merrill scored on a rebound off a direct kick in the 72nd minute to earn a 1-1 tie with highly regarded Massapequa in Section 8 action. A week earlier, the team snapped the 30-game winning streak of four-time defending state Class A champion Rockville Centre South Side.

   It seems odd for anyone to be able to break a single-season school record in mid-September, but Megan Godbout did just that for Susquehanna Valley yesterday. Her feed to younger sister Abby Godbout was her 12th assist of the season.

   Coaching qualifications assessment: More than 50 million children under the age of 18 play organized sports each year, but players are lucky if the person running the team has had quality coaching education prior to assuming responsibilities.

   Information on the qualifications of the approximately 1 million American coaches is lacking according to the 2008 National Coaching Report. "American sport programs are dominated by volunteer, well-intended but largely unprepared amateur coaches," the 160-page National Association for Sport and Physical Education (NASPE) report released last month concludes.

   No federal law requires minimum coaching education or certification, according to the report, and only 27 states require a teaching credential for public-school coaching assignments. The National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) says few coaches have sought formal coaching education.

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