Sunday, Sept. 2, 2012: 100 times two at girls soccer tournament

   Seniors Sammy Blizzard of South Glens Falls and Miranda Haraughty of Glens Falls both scored the 100th goals of their careers.

   Blizzard, who scored 44 times as a junior, scored five times as the Bulldogs opened their season with a 7-0 victory over Albany. Haraughty hit 100 with a hat trick in Glens Falls’ 5-2 win vs. Troy.

   Scrutinizing specialization: Several papers have reported late this summer on changes in boys soccer created by the U.S. Soccer Federation strategy of creating nearly year-round academy schedules that remove many top players from the high school scene.

   Josh Thomson of The Journal News dialed it up a notch Sunday by taking a deeper look at specialization in sports, increasingly a trend in the last 25 years after decades of three-sporters being the meat and potatos of scholastic competition.

   Thomson launched his mainbar with Matt Landis, who bypassed his senior football season at Pelham last fall to remain focused on lacrosse, which was his ticket to a partial scholarship at the University of Notre Dame.

   “I think the bonds on the football team are special. The time you spend with those guys, I think it’s a whole lot of fun,” Landis said. “At the same time, I had to think about what was best for me and for my future.”

   He's hardly the first and certainly not the last athlete dealing with a trend that veteran North Rockland AD and football coach Joe Casarella termed “the ruination of high school sports.”

   “The kids get burned out,” Casarella told the paper. “It takes kids and puts them in one sport, and they dry up. And if it doesn’t happen in high school, it ends up happening later on.”

   L.I. coach dies: Chris Deeks, who had just taken over as head football coach at Great Neck North in addition to coaching boys lacrosse there for the past two seasons, died Thursday of a heart attack at the age of 60.

   The social studies teacher had previously coached lacrosse and football at Floral Park.

   "Chris was completely unflappable," Great Neck North AD Eamon Flood told Newsday. "He didn't complain, he just found solutions. He was positive about everything."

   More on Monaco: The father of a Williamsville South JV basketball player alleges that ousted coach Al Monaco ridiculed his son about his weight to the point that his boy's health suffered, The Buffalo News reported.

   Marvin Sanford filed a complaint to the effect with the school authorities and police. Monaco denied the allegation, and said the complaint was about playing time as well as Sanford's reaction to allegations that his son was bullying other players, a charge the father denied.

   Monaco was fired as the boys basketball and golf coach last month for reasons the school district has not disclosed.

   Sanford, a Buffalo police officer, said Monaco repeatedly ridiculed his son during the season, making food and weight-related comments at his son's expense, the paper reported.

   Monaco says Principal Daniel Ljiljanich and Superintendent Scott Martzloff told him and his union representative that Sanford secretly taped his meeting with the coach Feb. 16, though Sanford denied that when

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   "To me, if he lied to the superintendent and the principal about secretly taping this meeting, then what else has he lied about to them, and what credibility can he possibly have in any of these other allegations?" Monaco said.

   Forty is the new thirty: My evidence is not scientific, but there's little doubt that we've moved another step toward the era of pinball-machine scoring in New York high school football.

   With a handful of games still to be played today, there have been 88 winning teams -- there's an asterisk attached, though -- thus far that have posted 40 or more points in the Week 1 game. That's up from 52 in 2009 openers, 69 in 2010, and 78 in 2011. That's a measure of games in Sections 2 through 7, plus 9 and 10. The PSAL, which played on Week 1 in 2009 but pushed its start back a week starting the following year, was not counted.

   Scoring of 50 or more went from 15 instances in 2009, 18 in 2010, 28 last year and 21 this weekend.

   The reason the data is unscientific is that I did not weed out duplicates that would have resulted from intersectional matchups. We list scores by section, so those intersectional results get listed twice and were not weeded out. Still, out-of-section games are rare, and the number of big scores in those games should be fairly consistent with the other games.

   Injury update: Bishop Timon-St. Jude beat Williamsville South 21-14 on Friday, but it came at a cost. The Tigers lost quarterback Ryan Dougherty (knee) and receiver Bryant Fulton (ankle) to injuries during the game.

   Coach Challie Comerford tweeted Sunday that Dougherty will seek a second opinion after being told he was facing surgery.

   "It will be hard to replace the best leader and QB in WNY and NYS," the coach wrote. "Good to know there are still kids out there like Ryan."

   More football: The full list of Week 1 scores is now available on the site.

   Brief blogs recapping some Friday and Saturday: games of note across the state have also been posted.