Friday, June 7, 2013: Weather batters season-ending championships

   Leading off today: Heavy rain worthy of a small-craft advisory forced the cancellation of Day 1 of the New York State Public High School Athletic Association track and field championships at Middletown High School on Friday.

   The meet will be consolidated into a one-day event Saturday at the same location, officials announced. The revised schedule calls for an 8:30 a.m. start.

   The decision was announced just before 11 a.m. Friday amidst concerns over possible flash floods in the region. The public address announcer told those braving the conditions that the meet was postponed “because we don’t want to make it a swim meet,” The Daily Freeman reported.

   Late Friday, softball joined the list of affected events as organizers of the NYSPHSAA tournament in Queensbury announced that Saturday semifinals scheduled for Adirondack Sports Complex would be pushed back to no earlier than 11 a.m. Shortly after midnight, the NYSPHSAA added the remaining semifinals, on the Morse Field diamonds, to the list of games pushed back to no earlier than 11 a.m.

   As Pete Tobey of The Post-Star noted in a tweet worthy of NYSSWA punster-in-chief Neil Kerr, the situation looks to be a bit, uh, fluid.

   As is also the case with baseball in the Binghamton area, the softball semifinals and finals are scheduled as a one-day event on Saturday.

   Update: At about 7:40 a.m. Saturday, a tweet from the NYSPHSAA Twitter account said drainage was better than anticipated, so the games originally set for 9 a.m. at Morse Field's diamonds would start as originally scheduled.

   Anyone feel a draft around here? The start of Major League Baseball's annual First-Year Player Draft has been fairly kind to New York high school seniors, with four players taken in the first 10 rounds of the three-day session that began Thursday.

   First off the board with the 104th pick overall was Clarence pitcher Mark Armstrong. The right-hander, Gatorade's New York player of the year, was taken by the Cincinnati Reds. Fellow Section 6 star Jonah Heim of Amherst was next off the board at No. 129 to the Baltimore Orioles.

   Armstrong is scheduled to attend the University of Pittsburgh and Heim signed with Michigan State. Both stand to haul down six-figure signing bonuses should they opt to skip college and start their pro careers this summer.

   Also taken Friday were Half Hollow Hills East pitcher Stephen Woods (No. 188, Tampa Bay) and Horseheads third baseman Dylan Manwaring (No. 283, Atlanta). They're also looking at the possibility of signing bonuses well over $100,000 based on recent draft data.

   Former Iona Prep star Colin Moran, a third baseman at the University of North Carolina was the first collegian with a New York pedigree to be taken. Florida selected Moran No. 6 overall in the first round.

   More than 1,200 high school, college and foreign prospects will be selected by the end of Saturday's session.

   Sad news out of Western NY: Well-known Buffalo-area basketball official and football referee Matt Perillo died in his sleep Thursday at the age of 48, The Buffalo News reported.

   Perillo was given a 20 percent chance to live in January 2012 after contracting septicemia, a bacteria in the blood that often occurs with severe infection, and having both feet amputated during a 10-week hospitalization.

   His rehabilitation had reportedly been going well. Using crutches to balance on his new prosthetics, he manned the last stage of a 100-person relay that covered the 10K course in a Lancaster road race last July, the paper reported.

   “I always said to anyone who would listen, everyone should have an attitude like Matt Perillo. He just hit it head on,” said Bob Schreck, a fellow referee. “He was adamant that he was going to get back out on the field.”

   Penfield coach steps down: John Butterworth, 60, the boys soccer coach at Penfield since 1985, has retired after compiling a 384-11-70 record with three NYSPHSAA championships (two outright, one tie) from 2001-04.

   He succeeded George Steitz, who won 408 games in the 31 previous seasons.

Spring tournament schedules NYSPHSAA boys lacrosse NYSPHSAA girls lacrosse NYSPHSAA baseball NYSPHSAA softball

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   “He was a great student of the game and I know he was a better tactician of the game than I ever was,” Steitz told the Democrat and Chronicle.

   Changes at McQuaid: Jack Leasure, a two-time All-Greater Rochester guard at McQuaid who went on to a career as a deadly 3-point shooter at Coastal Carolina, has been named the high school's new varsity basketball coach.

   He replaces Jack Ruppert, who stepped down after seven seasons.

   McQuaid also announced that AD David Spiehler has accepted the same position at Brophy College Prep in Phoenix. He will be replaced by Matt Thomas, a 1996 McQuaid graduate who previously coached rugby there and has advanced degrees from Wake Forest and the University of Rochester.

   Strange, strange ending: A teen walked off the court after the first set, forfeiting the New Hampshire state girls tennis final Tuesday because of what her family said was abusive fan behavior.

   Briana Leonard, a senior at Bishop Guertin High School, walked to her parents' car after dropping the first set in the best-of-three New Hampshire Interscholastic Athletic Association singles championship in Manchester and headed home.

   Sunday Swett, of Bow High was declared the champion.

   “This is a hostile environment,” Tim Leonard, the player's father, told the Nashua (N.H.) Telegraph. “They are cheering for people to lose rather than win. I don’t want to take anything away from Sunday. She deserves it. She’s an amazing tennis player. This is nothing against her. It’s about the environment created here and hopefully they learn from it."

   Leonard said his daughter was subjected to abuse by spectators because the family resides just across the state line. The Leonards live in Westford, Mass., approximately 12 miles south of Bishop Guertin in Nashua.

   “We had an unfortunate experience,” NHIAA Executive Director R. Patrick Corbin told the newspaper. “I’ve never seen something like this at a tennis match.”

   Corbin was surprised that spectators may have taken issue with Leonard's residency.

   “I’ve never heard that before,” her said. “Most of the kids that go to (Bishop Guertin) are probably from Massachusetts. It makes no difference."

   The championship match was already eventful before the abrupt ending. Leonard was penalized a point and loss of serve for being one minute late for the scheduled start of the final. She also was attended to briefly by her coach after bruising her knees in a fall during the first set.

   “This is an 18-year-old girl who fell and got hurt and people are cheering," said Kristen Leonard, the player's mother. " They were bullying her. This has been going on for two years. They’ve wanted her out for two years because she’s not a New Hampshire girl. Because we live in Massachusetts.”

   Brianna Leonard held a 4-0 career record vs. Swett in high school and USTA events before the forfeit, the paper reported.

   “We really didn’t talk during the match,” Swett told the paper. “At one point we were switching sides. I was up 4-3, and as we were passing each other she said, ‘Shut your crowd up.’ At that point I was thinking I have to do it for the fans.”

   Extra points: With victories by its three girls squads in Friday's semifinals in Cortland, all six Section 3 lacrosse teams will be playing for NYSPHSAA championships on Saturday. The boys finals are at St. John Fisher College in Rochester.

   Sharp-eyed Igor Bishko, the retired Massapequa AD, corrected my reference (picked up from a media source) to Bayport-Blue Point by noting his school's team (29-0 in 2006) appears to be the most recent team to have gone undefeated en route to a Long Island baseball championship.