against all odds.
"[P]arents and school officials credit DePoalo, a blunt, no-nonsense disciplinarian, with building a winning atmosphere," the story says. "His players, they say, are expected to focus on school and think about college. He is not averse to benching players, no matter how valuable they are to the team, if they’re not performing in the classroom. He allows players to miss practice to get help on schoolwork and stays in touch with their teachers via e-mail. He doesn’t let his players wear hats or do-rags. He describes himself as a disciplinarian but also as someone who cares deeply about his players."
Earlier this month, The Post-Standard caught up with girls soccer standout Nicole Close, who transferred to Baldwinsville after becoming academically ineligible at Cicero-North Syracuse at the end of the spring semester.
Her situation has been the subject of nasty e-mails and online forum postings throughout the fall season.
"We've never had any hate in our lives until this happened," said Diane Close, the player's mother. "Then all of a sudden people are coming out of the woodwork hating us. It came from nowhere."
Doctor, doctor: And then there was last week's feature by Josh Thomson of The Journal News, examining the role of dentists in repairing some of the damage done on the field or the ice.
One tale in the feature describes Dr. Donald J. Salomon working on an NHL player who was hit in the face by a puck.
"At the tail end of his last season with the Rangers, defenseman Ron Greschner was struck by a puck. The next morning, he had three or four root canals in one excruciating sitting," Thomson wrote. "Salomon can't remember the exact number all these years later, only that the night before, he had extracted parts of two teeth and shaved others as Greschner sat in the trainer's room between periods. The mangled defenseman never missed a shift.
"'That night,' Salomon said, 'he drank his beer through a straw.'"