Leading off today: Catching up on a few items that I never quite got around to writing about over the weekend:
With all the hoopla over QB Dan Scalo's successful return from shoulder surgery, I never noticed that Andrew Tolosi's name wasn't showing up in stories this fall. Tolosi was the starting running back in the 2008 state Class AA final and finished the season with 624 yards.
Well, Kevin Witt of The Times Herald-Record wrote about Tolosi's absence on Friday, and it's a frightening story. Once a muscular 170 pounds, Tolosi is down to 118 now while still working to overcome the damage suffered in a June car wreck.
From mid-June to mid September he spent all but three days hospitalized primarily because because of complications from a torn pancreas. There have been four trips to the operating room, and it wasn't until last week that Tolosi was able to start keeping food down.
In July, a drainage tube inserted through his back clogged, and Tolosi's lungs started filling with fluid. On top of that, more damage was found in the pancreas and acidic secreations were tearing up his stomach.
"The worst pain of my life," Tolosi said. "I'm sitting there, curled up into a ball, for days and days and days. They told me I needed surgery. I'm 17 years old. I don't want to hear that."
There's no way Tolosi will return to the field this season, but he is considering prep school or petitioning for another year at Monroe-Woodbury in order to keep his hopes of playing in college alive.
Meanwhile, a story out of Arkansas has been picking up steam the last few days as chatter about it has made its way onto the Internet and talk radio.
Luke Matheson of ArkansasVarsity.com, an affiliate of Rivals.com, told the story of Thamail Morgan's sporting gesture late in a recent game.
With a victory already in hand against an opponent taking the field following the death of one player and injuries to several others in a truck accident, Morgan pulled up at the 5-yard line on a long kickoff return and took a knee rather than bring the ball into the end zone for meaningless points.
From there, the Cave City offense ran out the clock and kept the score a respectable 34-16.
Making the story of sportsmanship even more fascinating is that Matheson was able to weave in background on Morgan, who was once regarded as a college prospect but was booted from his previous school's sports teams for undisclosed disciplinary reasons.
"Before I screwed up and got myself into trouble, I had some schools like Arkansas, Florida State, Ole Miss, and some other big schools looking at me,'' he player said. "Now they are not looking at me, but I have no one to blame but myself for that. Hopefully I can get on someone's radar, even if it is a lower level D-1 or D-2 school."
The story is nearly 1,800 words, which makes it pretty much twice as long as what passes for in-depth sportswriting in most newspapers these days. But it's definitely worth a few minutes of your time.
Cross country: It's hard to believe the McQuaid Invitational is already coming up this weekend. Upstate's biggest meet is Saturday at Genesee Valley Park.
The traditionally strong roster of competing schools is on board: Boys teams from Baldwinsville, Liverpool, Jamesville-DeWitt, Jordan-Elbridge and Tully will make the
