It's an issue that many of us who've covered high school sports over the years have seen first-hand: Club and Olympic Development Program soccer coaches discouraging players from participating in other school sports during the winter and spring . . . AAU basketball coaches shuttling basketball prospects all around the country during the summer and "assisting" in their transfers from CHSAA to PSAL schools (or vice versa) . . . And the beat goes on.

   Name a sport and there's almost some ongoing conflict.

   Yesterday, the New York Daily News did a lengthy piece on the conflict between club and school programs in the sport of track and field, and examples cited by reporter Ebenezer Samuel should raise alarm signals.

   Sports must above all else be a safe haven for athletes, which is to say that the first responsibility of any school or club coach is to assure the well-being of the students. And achievement/success for the athlete is more important than what those accomplishments do to further a coach's ambition.

   And if there's a school vs. club conflict not covered above, then the coach needs to remember who's paying the freight. If you're drawing a check from the school (a.k.a. the taxpayers), then your allegiance needs to be to the school when all else is equal.

   And in cases in which the school and club coaches are not the same person, the rule should be clear. The club coach should have no say while the high school season is in progress.

   That does not appear to have been the case with Springfield Gardens sprinter Rashawn Simpson. In June, he ended up running for his club and school teams on consecutive days. Competeing in the Junior Olympics qualifier almost certainly led to a sixth-place finish in the PSAL outdoor championships, costing him a lane in the state meet at Cicero-North Syracuse the following week.

   "If I had to do it over again, I wouldn't have run JO," Simpson told the paper.

   "The high school should feed the club team in the summer, and vice versa," said 1996 Olympic gold medalist Derrick Adkins, director of track and field at the Armory in Manhattan. "It should all work together for the good of the student-athlete."

   The newspaper story cited several other conflicts, chiefly involving PSAL teams and coaches. It's less of an issue at CHSAA schools, which typically do not face the same sort of union restrictions when it comes to hiring. The worst was probably Transit Tech runners Julian Wood and Malik Sykes telling coach Sydney McIntosh they would only compete if they could skip team practices and train with their club team. McIntosh said no.

   Transit Tech athlete Dexter Bollers approved of McIntosh's stance.

   "Julian, he was always like, 'I'm trying to help you guys

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out,'" he said. "They'll walk around like they're trying to help you out."

   St. Ray's junior picks Arizona: Sean Miller doesn't have any commitments yet from players in the Class of 2010, but the new men's basketball coach at Arizona has landed his first junior.

   St. Raymond’s standout Sidiki Johnson has verbally committed to Arizona, FiveBoroSports.com reported over the weekend. The 6-foot-7 forward, who averaged 11.3 points as a sophomore, was attracting interest from Kentucky, Virginia Tech and most of the Big East.

   Miller, a former Pitt star who most recently coached at Xavier, made solid inroads into New York City in the spring when he landed incoming freshmen Lamont (Momo) Jones and Kevin Parrom.

   Hey, your 15 minutes are up: Former Buffalo McKinley basketball player Jayvonna Kincannon is back in the news for the wrong reasons. She faces allegations that she punched a police officer, WIVB-TV reported.

   Prosecutors allege she punched Buffalo Police Officer Kim Beaty as Kincannon's grandmother Marsha Jones was being taken into custody last Wednesday. Kincannon, her grandmother, and aunt, Darlene Fitzgerald, were all arrested during a disturbance on Buffalo's east side.

   Kincannon was in the news last year for being suspended from school for five weeks while trying to speak out on behalf of a fired volunteer basketball coach.

   Extra points: NYSSWA member Steve Grandin has pulled together the class-by-class enrollment data for the NYSPHSAA's football-playing schools. That PDF file is always a handy reference tool. Let us know if you find any possible errors and I'll pass the info along to Steve. . . . Offensive lineman Sean Donnelly of Trinity-Pawling says he will play football at Tulane beginning in September 2010. The 6-foot-8, 290-pound left tackle was being recruited mostly by Division I-AA programs.