As everyone else waits to start the February post-season bum rush in Section III high school sports (girls track this Wednesday at Manley), others are ready to go - or already into it.
That starts with girls ice hockey. Oswego will be in the playoffs, and so will Skaneteles. Both are in state quarterfinals this Saturday, and all the winners are coming to the Lakers' home ice at the Community Center for the "Frozen Four" Feb. 12 and 13...

CATEGORY: General Sports

TAGS: Section III, tournaments, girls hockey, wrestling

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We are now in the midst of the most agonizing two weeks in the sports calendar. Not physically traumatic, mind you, but just long, drawn-out, and maddening for all those waiting for the last game of the National Football League season - the one so important they gave it Roman numerals.
Edition XLIV of the thing they called the Super Bowl, played in a stadium in Miami that has changed names every six months or so, may carry as much excitement, emotion and spectacle as any of the first XLIII editions. And little of it has to do with the Indianapolis Colts.
When Garrett Hartley nailed that 40-yard kick through the uprights at the end of a heart-pounding NFC Champioship on Jan...

CATEGORY: Football (American)

TAGS: Super Bowl XLIV, Saints, Colts, preview

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The month of February means, in Central New York, that we start out high school championships in earnest.
Sure, wrestling got a head start back in January with the sectional dual meet and South Jefferson's triumph, but everyone joins in now, starting with girls indoor track and the sectional gathering at Manley Field House.
First, it's good to still have Manley as a facility...

CATEGORY: Running

TAGS: Section III, girls indoor track championships

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Admit it - you were happy on this night, unless you are from Indiana. Even the Manning family had to smile for the way it turned out. And you can't even measure the joy on Bourbon Street, where Mardi Gras began approximately nine days early.
For most of its history, the mere thought of the New Orleans Saints as champions of the National Football League was laughable, inconceivable, ridiculous - and it was Saints fans doing all the laughing and ridicule, going so far as the paper-bags-on-their-heads route when the team went a glorious 1-15 in 1980.
But it has happened...

CATEGORY: Football (American)

TAGS: Super Bowl XLIV, Saints, Colts, New Orleans

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Okay, so it's safe to assume that Utica Memorial Auditorium will be a fairly busy place in the next five weeks.
During that time, Utica Aud will host, in order, (1) the Section III wrestling championships, (2) the sectional hockey finals, (3) all of the sectional boys and girls basketball title games and (4) the state hockey "Frozen Four". Rarely, if ever, has the same venue been used so many times for big high-school events in Central New York.
First come the wrestlers, who will get all their work done in a single day, Division I (large schools) and Division II (small schools) alike, using eight mats...

CATEGORY: Wrestling

TAGS: Wrestling, Section III, class championships

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A few years ago, the Class AA girls volleyball teams in Section III moved their show to the fall, to get in line with other sections and go for a state championship...

CATEGORY: Volleyball

TAGS: Section III, girls volleyball playoffs, analysis

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As far as tension goes, few moments in the annual American sports calendar can compare with the mid-March announcement of the field for the NCAA Division I men’s basketball championship.
Blame television, of course. In 1982, when CBS picked up the rights from NBC, Billy Packer had an idea – one that actually made sense...

CATEGORY: Basketball

TAGS: NCAA Tournament, expansion proposals, thoughts

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A Tuesday evening in February, and the parade route stretched across New Orleans, through all of the city’s familiar landmarks and locales. Tens of thousands joined in the revelry - singing, dancing, the throwing of beads and pure celebration, cares and concerns melting away.
And Mardi Gras was a week away.
As long as sports teams have won championships, there have been parades to celebrate the outcome, but this was a first for New Orleans. Fortunately, they had about 200 years experience with parades, so they knew what to do.
This isn’t the place for the usual Super Bowl postmortem about big plays, coach’s decisions or which commercials were the best...

CATEGORY: Football (American)

TAGS: Saints, Super Bowl win, New Orleans

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In the last couple of weeks, the top Central New York high school stars on the track and in the pool were busy deciding Section III championships.
It actually began on Feb. 3 with the girls indoor track sectionals, at the familiar venue of Manley Field House, where some heated team battles popped up.
In Class AA, Cicero-North Syracuse needed all of its depth to fend off the Fayetteville-Manlius posse of distance runners and win 107 points to 96. Kentucky-bound Taylor Wendler won the 3,000-meter and Jasmine Thompson piled up lots of points, too.
Jamesville-DeWitt dominated Class A, owning the field events with wins from the likes of Natalie Mannion and Marae Tearney, while Skaneteles inched past Cazenovia and Clinton, propelled by Victoria Sakal's sprint sweep...

CATEGORY: General Sports

TAGS: Section III, championships, indoor track, swimming

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They tried something new for this year's Section III wrestling championships at Utica Memorial Auditorium - or was it something old?
It was new to blend the Division I (large school) and Division II (small school) events together, two meets in one. Then again, up until 2003 there was just one sectional and one state champion per weight class, and a lot of people didn't like it when it got split.
Trying to make it more cost-efficient (and trying to get bigger crowds), they did it all in one day, using eight mats at Utica Aud.
The show went on for more than 12 hours, so major bonus points to all the people that worked all day...

CATEGORY: Wrestling

TAGS: Section III wrestling championships, analysis

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It's mid-February, and time to get serious.
The girls basketball Section III playoffs begin tomorrow, an event not as extensive as in years past, due to the rule that you had to have a .400 record (in the league, or against sectional foes, or overall) to join the party.
That leaves just eight teams in both Class D and AA, with 39 in between. Of the 55 that start now, only five will claim banners a few weekends from now at Utica Auditorium. Who will do so?
Good luck trying to guess Class D. Two-time defending champ Sackets Harbor starts out at no. 4, favored against Madison, but starting at a possible semifinal with steady top seed New York Mills, whose 16-2 mark was mostly attained against Class C foes. Oriskany is the no...

CATEGORY: Basketball

TAGS: Section III, girls basketball, playoffs, preview

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Many things about the 2010 edition of the Section III boys basketball playoffs are different from the tournament of 2009.
For one thing, the .400 rule is back, which cut down on entries (just eight made it in Class A) and kept Class B and D together as one. Only Class C split up, and as we'll see, it's not a lopsided bracket.
Starting tomorow night, 71 teams tip off, hoping to reach the championship games - which for the first time in decades will not be at Manley Field House, which is a sad thing...

CATEGORY: Basketball

TAGS: Section III, boys basketball, playoffs, preview

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It took just one night for the Section III basketball playoffs to explode with various bits of drama and excitement, mostly on the boys side.
There was Nottingham and Indian River in Class A, going to two overtimes and almost a third before a triple-teamed Roosevelt Bullock hit the winning jumper for the Bulldogs.
There was East Syracuse-Minoa, once up by 11, having to watch as Oneida worked its way to two different game-winning shots before surviving by a point.
There was Port Byron and Herkimer needing overtime in Class C, and Solvay taking full advantage of the absence of Will Fiacchi to stage a Class B upset...

CATEGORY: Basketball

TAGS: Section III, basketball playoffs, first round, analysis

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For years, NASCAR had heard the catcalls. Mostly, they came from the loyalists, the diehards, the good ol’ boys (and girls) who buy the merchandise, gas up the RV, park in the track infield and pledge allegiance to Dale Jr. and other deities of the ovals.
Racing had become too clean, they said. Too boring, too regimented, too much playing nice to everyone (especially the sponsors), too little grit and grime, and far too little conflict.
Worse yet, the circuit had started to abandon the south...

CATEGORY: Motor Sports

TAGS: Daytona 500, NASCAR, pothole, racing surface

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They started at 10 a.m. at Jamesville-DeWitt and didn't end until close to 9 p.m. In those 10-plus hours, five Section III girls volleyball championships were handed out, three of them to undefeated teams.
The unbeatens included Skaneateles, a Class B champion that was a long time coming...

CATEGORY: Volleyball

TAGS: Section III girls volleyball finals, overview

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Our continued look at the Section III basketball playoffs will go through two distinct parts. Here, we'll go over what happened in the quarterfinals and, in a later entry, we'll preview the semifinals once we know where, and when, the games will be played.
First the recap, by class and gender...
Class AA Boys - As top seed CNS was dispatching Auburn, more drama was keeping up with the end of the SU-Georgetown game. Those looking for excitement had to wait for Friday, when two favorites, Corcoran and F-M, got taken out at home - the Cougars by defending champion CBA, the Hornets by Henninger. We should have seen the latter coming - it now marks seven straight by the Black Knights over F-M...

CATEGORY: Basketball

TAGS: Section III basketball, quarterfinals, recap

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After a busy and exciting opening week of the Section III girls basketball playoffs, 20 teams remain and await this weekend's semifinal round.
They spilt it up quite nicely, with five games on Friday and five on Saturday. And most of the match-ups should be terrific.
On Friday, both Class AA semifinals take place at Liverpool, starting with, arguably, the best game of the whole weekend between Corcoran and CBA.
How this starts is real important. The Brothers have jumped all over recent foes early, with both pressure defense and lots of Leanne Ockenden 3-pointers. The Cougars' mission is for Coriesha Hickey to get in Ockenden's face and prevent that from happening...

CATEGORY: Basketball

TAGS: Section III, girls basketball, semifinals preview

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Consider the Section III boys basketball semifinals to be a three-course meal - a Thursday appetizer of two games, a Saturday dessert of two more games, and a big Friday meal of eight games in between.
We'll take them together, though, starting with Class D, where both games are Friday.
At Onondaga Community College, 19-0 DeRuyter must do something ironic against 18-1 Syracuse Academy of Science - namely, the Rockets must slow things down. Todd Widrick's defensive-minded charges can't allow the Atoms to run and gun, as they've done with 183 points in two playoff wins...

CATEGORY: Basketball

TAGS: Section III, boys basketball, semifinals preview

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Every couple years or so, the powers-that-be in Section III football examine the picture for flaws and blemishes, then try to make what it considers to be necessary changes.
Such has been done again, with new class and league alignments. And while the large schools remain largely untouched, the small schools have seen some significant movement - all of it for the good.
Start with Class B, which really needed the help. It only had 10 schools each of the last two years, meaning just about everyone got into the eight-team playoffs - though, to be fair, Oneida did reach the state finals in 2008 and Westhill got to the state semifinals a year later.
In the new version, Class B has 13 teams and a lot more quality...

CATEGORY: Football (American)

TAGS: Section III, football, realignment

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CATEGORY: Hockey

TAGS: Hockey, Olympics, Canada, Russia, Soviets, 1972, Summit Series

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Yes, yes, we know absolutely everything involving pucks or sticks paled next to that epic we saw in Vancouver on this last day of February.
It was breathtaking stuff - Canada surging ahead 2-0, Team USA coming back, tying it in the final seconds with an extra attacker, and (as if this was somehow scripted) Sidney Crosby getting the winner in overtime, sending the home nation into ecstasy.
Still, both of the combatants on this day had to leave the Winter Olympics happy. The Yanks got the most medals ever, the Canadians the most gold medals ever. And Ryan Miller...what a man in the net...

CATEGORY: Hockey

TAGS: Section III, hockey finals, West Genesee, New Hartford, Baldwinsville, Cazenovia

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