Leading off today: Though I ended up writing a fairly lengthy item, I hesitated over whether to do much the other day about Gavin Hall on the grounds that he might be fodder for another blog entry by the middle of this week.

   I should have trusted my instincts. As good as his performance was over the weekend when the Pittsford Mendon rising sophomore won the Rochester District Golf Association championship by 18 shots, he did something even more amazing yesterday.

   Competing in the second round of qualifying in the U.S. Junior Amateur at Egypt Valley Country Club in Ada, Mich., Hall fired a 10-under-par 62 to set a tournament single-round record. It was the second-lowest score in a USGA championship event -- Billy Horschel shot 60 in 2006 at the U.S. Amateur -- and broke the course record of 63 by Larry Nelson in a 2000 Senior Tour event.

   Hall opened with a 73 on Monday. His two-round total of 9-under 135 left him tied for second entering the 64-player match play phase of the tournament.

   "I came in with a lot of confidence, but I wanted to prove and redeem myself from last year because I didn’t make match play," Hall said. "Coming into this week, I wanted to make match play, because it’s a whole different ball game. You’re not really fighting to come back. You’re playing the course, but you’re really just playing the person next to you."

   Hall's first-round match was scheduled for 12:05 p.m. today.

   Extra year of football OK'd: Running back Andrew Tolosi of Monroe-Woodbury missed his senior football season last fall while he recovered from an automobile accident that caused him to miss more than half the school year.

   After being unable to graduate with his class in June, Tolosi petitioned for an extra year of football eligibility, and the request was granted by Section 9.

   "When I heard, I just dropped to the ground and started crying," Tolosi told The Times Herald-Record. "When I was in the hospital, I never thought I would get to play football again. But to come back, and get my senior year back, is the best feeling ever."

   Tolosi helping Monroe-Woodbury to the 2008 NYSPHSAA Class AA final in Syracuse with 624 rushing yards and five touchdowns for the season. In June 2009, he was a passenger in a car returning from Syracuse when the accident happened. It led to four surgeries and a total of three months in three hospitals, contributing to his weight slipping to just 118 pounds from his normal 170.

   Light the torch: The Empire State Games end their hiatus tonight with opening ceremonies at the University at Buffalo -- we hope. The weather forecast calls for about a 30 percent chance of anything from light rain to thunderstorms tonight.

   With no suitable indoor venue available if the storms are too intense, ESG officials will do their best to wait out any heavy rain at UB Stadium, sheltering athletes inside Alumni Arena if necessary.

   The Buffalo News had a nice five-page preview in print this morning, and some of that content is also available online.

NYSSWA All-Sport Championship   MAIN  |  2009-10 top overall schools   Class-by-class boys  |  Class-by-class girls   More about the NYSSWA All-Sport Championship   Last year's ASC Championship site

   By the way, the paper's web site unveiled a redesign overnight, which has led to an assortment of broken links and missing elements such as most of the high school sports reference library.

   All I can say is, "Been there, done that." I think I've been through four major redesigns in about 14 years of online work with the Democrat and Chronicle and FOXSports.com, and they seldom go smoothly.

   That's not a criticism as much as it is an acknowledgement that media sites tend to be very unwieldy. No matter how carefully you plan, there's invariably a morning or two when you leap from a sound sleep at the realization that forgot to migrate part of the content to the new site.

   Having said that, I'm happy to report that the redesign of the New York State Sportswriters Association site is progressing ahead of schedule and may make its debut next week.

   Tracking the action: I'll be making a couple of trips over to Buffalo this week, but that's mostly to collect interviews for upcoming blog entries or freelance stories.

   I've reactivated the live page on the our site that collects Twitter updates from a variety of N.Y. media sources. The Buffalo local organizing committee for the ESG posts there as well, which should help keep us advised of schedule changes, etc.

   Wrestling pioneer dies: A memorial service was held yesterday in Sidney to remember Tom Robertson, who died Friday at the age of 79.

   Robertson, a five-sport athlete at Windsor and sectional wrestling champ before graduating in 1952, was one of the organizers of the first NYSPHSAA wrestling championships in Ithaca in 1963. He coached for three seasons at Deposit and then 32 at Sidney before retiring in 1991.

   Robertson was inducted into the New York State Coaches Hall of Fame, New York State Wrestling Hall of Fame and the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Okla.