Leading off today: The nicest perk related to attending a state championship event has nothing to do with getting in the building for free or sitting on press row.

   Rather, it's about getting to spend some time around players and coaches that I mention in blogs throughout the season or read about online but geerally don't get a chance to meet until late in the postseason.

   On Sunday alone, a couple of coaches came through with what we sometimes refer to in the business as their "A material" -- stories or one-liners that are so good that you know instantly that you're going to want to share then with readers or viewers .

   First, there was New Rochelle coach Lou DiRienzo, whose team suffered its second tough-luck loss in a state football final in five years. In 2004, the Hugenots lost Ray Rice to a collarbone injury en route to a 41-35 loss to the Greg Paulus CBA team at the Carrier Dome.

   On Sunday, starting QB Lewis Edney went down with an injury to his left ankle late in the first quarter. Though the Hugenots pulled together and played well, North Tonawanda went on to a 14-7 victory.

   "What I told the kids at the end of the game is that in 2004 we had one of these runner-up plaques, and I kind of just shoved it under my desk," DiRienzo said following the awards ceremony. "I didn't appreciate that plaque until we didn't get here the following year."

   "Now that plaque hangs proudly on my wall. And these kids can be proud of this plaque."

   So very true.

   And then there's Gene Mastin of Hornell, a veteran coach for whom I've always had high regard. Besides always being cooperative with the media, he's long struck me as a guy who keeps life in perspective.

   Make no mistake about it, the man wants to win football games -- which is what the Red Raiders did with a 16-14 win over Nanuet to cap a perfect season. But you know deep down his idea of a great season would be a 5-4 record with every senior on the team going to college with a nice financial-aid package.

   The other thing about Mastin is he has an appreciation for gizmo plays. You might remember Sept. 24, 1988 as the night Ben Johnson won the 100-meter dash at the Seoul Olympics, only to subsequently surrender it in a doping scandal.

   Me? I remember it as the night Canandaigua lineman Jon Welch ran an absolutely perfect fumblerooskie at Alfred University to beat Hornell. Even Mastin marveled after the game how Welch ran in one direction with the ball while 21 other guys were moving the other way without it.

   It was a beautiful piece of deception, as was Hornell's first two-point conversion in Sunday's Class B final. The Red Raiders used their "muddle huddle," aligning seven players to the far left end of the line of scrimmage and quickly snapped the ball. Quarterback Dominic Scavo caught Nanuet in a split-second of uncertainty and completed the conversion pass to Jordan Schwartz for an 8-7 lead.

   Great play, but there was a far better story behind it, and it was vintage Mastin.

   Those following Hornell during the playoffs knew that they were struggling a little bit down the stretch with their kicking game. Though he was making big contributions elsewhere on the field, junior Dylan Dunn had missed three extra-point kicks and had another blocked during the first two rounds of the state playoffs.

   Kicking the ball through high-school uprights is bad enough. Having to do it with the college-field uprights was not something Mastin wanted Dunn to endure.

   "On the narrower goal posts we weren't going to put it on him," Mastin said. "If it wasn't going to work, I wanted it to be on my play call and not on the kid's kick."

   And then there was more from Mastin. Workhorse running back Austin Dwyer ran for 169 yards and also clinched the title with a late interception. A week earlier,

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he ran for 399 yards during a 49-7 victory against Westhill to break the record for rushing yards in a NYSPHSAA postseason game.

   "We were on the sideline in the third quarter and we were ready to pull the kids," Mastin recalled. "One of our coaches gets a text message from one of out former players in Utica watching on TV. it said, 'I want you to know that Austin has 385 yds and the record is 394.'

   "Right there it went on," the coach said, clicking an imaginary light bulb over his head. "That 394 by Jerimiah Allen (in 2007 for Geneva) was against us. So we were getting that off -- even if it meant going to overtime, we were getting that off the books."

   Like I said, a reporter's job can be fun when the key figures give you great material to work with.

   A remarkable young man: Deservedly so, Sweet Home's Deshanaro Morris got a lot of attention last week.

   Morris was a tremendous junior running back and linebacker a year ago for the Panthers and was particularly outstanding in the playoffs. He clearly was going to be the player that the Panthers rebuilt around in a bid to defend their state Class A title in 2009.

   By now you know that never happened. Morris was seriously injured in an offseason car accident and is confined to a wheelchair. I for one cannot begin to fathom what he has had had to endure physically and emotionally this year.

   But I can tell you this much: Deshanaro Morris "gets it."

   He's way beyond feeling sorry for himself or angry, and he clearly has a healthy sense of perspective and a sense of empathy unlike many young people.

   Keith McShea of The Buffalo News did a nice story on Morris last week and then followed up with a blog posting in which "Day-Day" really blew us away as we talked football in the pressbox over the weekend.

   In the interview with McShea for the story about himself, Morris started talking about how Burnt Hills coach Matt Shell's son, 8-year-old Jacob, is being treated for cancer in Massachusetts.

   "He's got cancer, and when I was reading about it, it touched my heart," Morris told McShea. "I'm not the only person going through something, and he loves the game. And his problems are way bigger than mine. I'm talking about walking, he's talking about life and death. So things are emotional, personal for both teams.

   "We'll be playing for Sweet Home, but we'll also playing for little Jacob."

   Wow. Plain and simple, wow.

   And one more note: Mount St. Michael completed a most difficult month on Thanksgiving Day by defeating Cardinal Hayes in the CHSFL Class AA final.

   Promising running back Kyle Rembert died of carbon monoxide poisoning while in his family's apartment Nov. 7. But his teammates said they felt like he was out there with them down the stretch and as they earned the Joe Lamas Memorial Trophy with a 28-22 upset.

   "We didn't need luck," MSM quarterback Jaylen Amaker told The New York Daily News. "We had our 12th man."

   Leading 21-15, MSM came out of halftime with Amaker holding Rembert's No. 45 jersey. He walked over to the sideline, draped the jersey over the back of the bench and put a football on the seat.

   "When we started this, we had one mission: to win this for '45,' and that's what we did," said Mount's Gary Acquah, clutching the trophy after the game. "Kyle, we love you."