Wednesday, Aug. 29, 2012: Girls volleyball? Boys volleyball? Which is it?

   Leading off today: TheBatavian.com reported this week that as many as eight Section 5 girls volleyball teams could have boys on their roster at the start of the season this fall, which will further rile the numerous coaches and parents who were upset last year when five boys took the floor at various Rochester-area schools.

   "It's a concern that it's taking off a little bit," Section 5 Executive Director Ed Stores told the website. "Unless the State Education Department gives us a little more guidance, there could be more."

   State rules allow for mixed competition as there is "no significant adverse effect," which Stores said Section 5 interprets to mean that no girls are cut from a roster to make room for a boy.

   Support for Monaco: About 75 supporters of Williamsville South basketball coach Al Monaco showed up at Tuesday's school board meeting in silent protest of his firing last week, The Buffalo News reported.

   The meeting was a special session to replace a board member who had resigned, so there was no public comment period during which residents could speak. Instead, they made their feelings known befoe and after the meeting.

   Superintendent Scott Martzloff told some of those who had assembled that the decision to remove the highly regarded veteran coach came after a thorough investigation. "Nobody knows what I know," Martzloff said. "I'm the only one who knows all the facts of the investigation."

   Among those showing support for Monaco was 2011 graduate Joe Licata, a record-setting two-sporter now on the football roster at the University at Buffalo.

   "As a player and person, it is always great to have someone that believes in you," Licata told the paper. "My dad, my mom and my three sisters have always believed in me for 19 years. I met coach Monaco in fifth grade; he has believed in me since fifth grade. He's supported me since then. I'll always love coach Monaco. He's done a lot of great things for me."

   Players on the move: Good things really do come in threes, at least if you're the girls basketball coach at Manhasset St. Mary's -- which is about to welcome a trio of rising-sophomore transfers from The Mary Louis Academy.

   Point guard Mei-Lyn Bautista and forward Jordan Agustus were starters at TMLA last winter, and McKayla Hernandez was a reserve guard. They entered Mary Louis as arguably the best freshmen group in New York City according to The New York Post, but now the TMLA roster is in transition. Guard Jasmine Nwajei had transferred to Murry Bergtraum during the past season.

   On paper, the latest departures all appear amicable following a 13-17 season in the ridiculously tough CHSAA Brooklyn/Queens league.

   Coach Tom Flynn's St. Mary's team was 12-13 last season in the CHSAA Nassau/Suffolk league and lost only one senior. The Gaels will be junior-heavy beyond 6-2 senior Alyssa James.

   Coach on the move? Jeff Cuilty, who coached 31 Section 9 champions since 1989, has departed as Newburgh Free Academy's wrestling coach and may continue in the sport at another school.

   Cuilty, a member of the New York State Wrestling Hall of Fame, had a 257-144 record at Newburgh after previously winning 89 matches in eight seasons at Ardsley.

   "My son (Bryan) graduated last year and we have only two paid coaches, so I'm stepping down and letting the two young guys coach the team," Cuilty, 54, told The Times Herald-Record. "It's tough. It's not something that I really wanted to do. We have a great group of kids and a great group of parents."

   New Ro coach is done: Bill Murphy announced last week he's leaving as boys basketball coach at New Rochelle, where he was 160-55 in nine seasons, to spend more time with his family.

   “My whole life has been coaching and they haven’t really seen me that much,” Murphy told The Journal News, referring to his children, who are 7 and 9.

   Murphy said he would continue to coach somewhere else at a lower level, which would be less time-consuming.

   Syracuse announcement: You likely heard the announcement out of Syracuse on Tuesday that The Post-Standard, Central New York's most significant daily paper for 75 or more miles in any direction and a part of the community since 1829, will undergo huge changes at the end of the year.

   The Post-Standard will limit home delivery to Tuesday,

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Thursday and Sunday beginning Jan. 1 and print a limited number of copies for sale in stores the rest of the week. By the end of 2013, those retail-only editions may be phased out entirely.

   The announcement is by no means a surprise to those of us in the media business since the paper's parent company announced similar plans for papers in the south (including New Orleans) earlier this year. Gannett, parent company of several New York newspapers, already operates in a similar fashion in Detroit.

   In reality, Syracuse held out for a long time. Rochester was the first major cities on the Thruway to shrink from two papers to one during the Internet era, first merging newsrooms and later shuttering the Times-Union in June 1997.

   When the process of blending The Post-Standard and Herald-Journal into one began, Syracuse staffers were promised that they would not be subjected to the somewhat random and often heartless process that Gannett's Rochester employees endured. And for several years that held true, but finally circulation losses spiraled to the point where people and products were thrown overboard in alarming fashion in the last four years.

   Editor and Publisher Stephen A. Rogers estimated on Tuesday that by 2018 The Post-Standard would be only 10 or 15 percent of what it is now without drastic changes.

   The knee-jerk reaction to those changes may be that it's another blow for newspapers and a blow to consumers. That's not necessarily inaccurate, but it's also not the whole story. More important than how the paper delivers its information will be how well The Post-Standard does so on its various platforms.

   If management constructs a strong plan and executes it, The Post-Standard has the chance to be eBay -- a company built on auctions that has since evolved into a potent online commerce force by tweaking and expanding its PayPal platform; even if the auction business shrivels up and dies (which it won't any time soon), eBay can remain viable.

   If management blows it, though, forget about eBay. Instead, they'll be racing Eastman Kodak to the bottom.

   What does Syracuse need to do?

   Readers/consumers are far more tech-savvy than they were at the turn of the century with respect to the way they access online material. Desktop computers gave way to laptops, and laptops have largely given was to pad devices and smart phones. Each device remains significant, but their differences make the days of the shovelware approach -- dumping the print edition's content onto the website each morning and doing a little bit of updating throughout the rest of the day -- outdated.

   Job No. 1 in the transition will be for The Post-Standard to vastly improve online delivery with better software for its website -- which was recently redesigned but not really upgraded from a technology standpoint -- and mobile-device apps that keep up with technology.

   If they get that much done between now and the end of the year, they'll have a fighting chance.

   Extra points: Reggie Agbeko, second-team all-state for the Buffalo St. Joe's basketball team last season as a senior, will attend South Kent School, a Connecticut prep school, The Buffalo News reported.