Leading off today: Former Wallkill girls soccer player Jasmin Crespi pleaded guilty today in Orange County Court to punching another player during post-game handshakes at a high school soccer game in 2006, the
Times-Herald Record reported.
Crespi, 19, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of third-degree assault. She admitted that she punched Cornwall's Ashley Thorpe on Oct. 31, 2006, causing injuries that required Thorpe to undergo surgery.
In exchange for her plea, Judge Robert Freehill agreed to cap Crespi's sentence at 60 days in jail. She'll be sentenced on Feb. 4. A civil case remains pending.
The criminal case took two years to resolve because of an appeal. Crespi was originally charged with felony assault under New York’s Safe Schools Against Violence in Education Act, but Freehill threw out the felony charge last year, prompting the appeal. Freehill's ruling was overturned on procedural grounds but held up after the case was returned to his court following the appeal.
Boys & Girls in the spotlight: Though it's billed as "A Woman Among Boys," Sunday's ESPN2 documentary is less about coach Ruth Lovelace than it is about the Boys & Girls basketball prgram as a whole.
Producer-directors Jon Alpert and Matthew O'Neill followed the team around for the entire 2007-08 school year, attending three or four practices and games per week, and captured the highs and lows as Lovelace came within a game of becoming the first female to coach a boys basketball team to a PSAL championship.
Lovelace has sent 35 players to college on full scholarships since taking over as coach at the age of 24 in 1994. That number is more impressive when put into the proper context: Boys & Girls enrollment is an unwieldy 4,300 students -- more than the combined enrollment of Section 5's 25 smallest basketball schools combined -- and the school is situated in the dangerous Bed-Stuy neighborhood in Brooklyn.
Indeed, one of the more compelling stories is that of Shalik Jenkins, now a freshman at SUNY New Paltz. Jenkins' father was jailed before his son's birth and was eventually sentenced to life in prison.
Another vignette had the mother of guard Clayton Sterling bringing her son to the homeless shelter in which she lived while attending college, a moment made more powerful by
