Leading off today: There will be football at Mount this fall, but the basketball program remains on the endangered list for now. Boosters only raised $220,000 of the $300,000 that was needed to restore fall sports and activities, but Superintendent W.L. "Tony" Sawyer said Monday that the funds are enough to field varsity and JV teams in football, volleyball, cross country, swimming, soccer and cheerleading.

   Middle schools, which have competed in interscholastic leagues in the past, will have intramural compeition instead.

   The district has said about $950,000 is needed to cover the full year of sports and that coaching vacancies remain unfilled. No deadline has been set for the winter, Sawyer said.

   "They say you have to take some time to smell the roses, and I really think we need to do that because we were so apprehensive about the fall," Donna Pirro, who was reassigned from AD to assistant principal, told The Journal News.

   New NYSPHSAA officers: Patrick Pizzarelli, director of athletics, health and physical education for Lawrence Public Schools, has been named the NYSPHSAA's 44th president effective Sept. 1 in a vote of the organization's Central Committee.

   He replaces Dr. Ron Black, who stepped down at the New York State Public High School Athletic Association's annual summer meeting last week.

   Mark Ward, superintendent for Ellicottville, was named first vice president. Eileen Troy, AD at Greenwich, will be second vice president.

   Wilson update: The Buffalo News reported over the weekend that a Wilson baseball player asked school personnel to stop sexual-themed hazing but was told he would be suspended and the police called if he did not drop the matter.

Also available online Partial list of football scrimmages

   The allegation was contained in a legal claim served on the school district by lawyers for two alleged victims. School officials also allegedly were told last year of a hazing attack in which a player was sodomized with a baseball bat; the victim of that attack is alleged to have been one of the attackers in April's incident on the baseball team bus that led to charges against three players and two coaches.

   The papers claim varsity players began targeting JV players "for beatings" on trips to and from away games roughly around the 2006 season. Hazing intensified by the next season, and regularly included pinning younger players to floor in the back of the bus, according to the papers.

   The Niagara County District Attorney’s Office has made the players accused in the April attack a plea offer that would allow them to plead guilty to a charge of forcible touching, a class A misdemeanor, and three counts of second-degree hazing, a violation. The players were charged with a count of felony third-degree aggravated sexual abuse and a misdemeanor count of endangering the welfare of a child under 17.

   Wilson Superintendent Michael Wendt declined to comment on the latest report.

   Extra points: Union-Endicott grad Jon Jones won his Ultimate Fighting Championship debut on Saturday, defeating Andre Gusmao by unanimous decision in a 205-pound fight in Minneapolis. Jones (7-0 overall) handed Gusmao his first loss in six matches. . . . BeRecruited.com says it registered 17,741 new athletes on its site in July, boosting its total to 237,000 and says 11,000 college coaches have joined since the launch in 2000 in order to be able to view athlete profiles. . . . Tom Cavanagh, co-founder of the Staten Island Rebels girls' travel program, has been hired as Notre Dame Academy's varsity basketball coach, The Advance reported. Cavanagh replaces John Hannafin, who was not retained after his 18th season.

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