Leading off today: East Meadow baseball coach Ken Sicoli secured
career win No. 500 after Matt Laudonio hit a solo home run in the top of the 13th inning to lift the Jets past MacArthur 2-1 Wednesday in a Section 8 Class AA second-round playoff series.
Laudonio drove in the first East Meadow run in the sixth inning.
Sicoli is in his 32nd season of coaching.
"I can't even honestly remember my 100th win or 200th and so on," Sicoli told Newsday about the milestone after the opener in the best-of-three-series. "But we were laughing that we'll never forget this one because it was such a great game."
Speaking of long games: A high school baseball game in Washington state went 17 innings Tuesday before Rochester beat La Center in a tournament game.
What had people buzzing most, though, was that Rochester's Dylan Fosnacht threw 194 pitches as he took a shutout into the 15th inning. The right-hander wound up with a no-decision, allowing seven hits, striking out 17 and walking three.
Coach Jerry Striegel said he checked in with his pitcher every inning to make sure he was OK, but he later expressed regret for leaving Fosnacht in the game for that long.
"I realize that it was way too many pitches," Striegel said Thursday. "I can understand everybody's concern about it. And I would tell you too that I am concerned also. I probably would change the decision today."
Never forget: President Obama recounted the heroics of former Nyack hockey and lacrosse star Welles Crowther when he spoke Thursday at the dedication of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum at the former World Trade Center site in lower Manhattan.
"They didn't know his name, they didn't know where came from, but they knew their lives had been saved by the man in the red bandanna," Obama said of the 24-year-old equities trader who died in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center after helping others escape.
John Orlando, the veteran Suffern hockey coach and Section 1 coordinator, remembered helping teach the sport to Crowther at clinics at Sportorama. Later, Crowther would play lacrosse at Boston College and serve as a volunteer fireman.
"We all have heroes of some sort or another and today we all can take pride that we have one small part in the formation of the lives of the young student-athletes that we serve," Orlando wrote in an email. "We must continue to give all these young people the best that we have in a changing, a very dangerous world.
"Thank you, Welles, the Crowther family and all the heroes of 9/11."
Never forget: Authorities have charged Eric Varney with stealing more than $12,000 while he was employed as
