That's zero, as in basically zero high school outdoors games played as scheduled today due to an early blast of winter weather across a large chunk of the state.

   The Journal News reported that three Section 1 field hockey first-round games were pushed backed a day, as were 15 boys soccer quarterfinals.

   There was a similar disruption in Section 2 thanks to heavy rain and the threat of measurable snow, according to The Times Union. That meant scrapping 14 girls soccer games and seven boys contests.

   And Section 9 fared only slightly better. Nine of 10 soccer games were called off by noon, and some volleyball matches were pushed back by at least one day, the Times-Herald Record reported.

   Slowing down the plans: The Katonah-Lewisboro school board’s plan to improve the John Jay playing fields is being scaled back in a nod to the reeling economy. The school board recommended this month that the $5.5-million proposal be trimmed to $3.1 million and be paid for entirely out of the district’s reserves. The board decided not to authorize a bond proposition that would have been put in front of district residents Dec. 16.

   The original plan called for rebuilding the rectangular fields behind the middle school and the high school, adding another rectangular field at each site and upgrading baseball and softball fields in front of the middle school. The softball field and the rectangular field in its outfield would be turned into synthetic turf fields.

   Under the new proposal, the reconstruction of the front fields and the installation of artificial turf will be priorities. The other work will be delayed by at least a year.

   Taking a closer look: There were a couple of decidedly different profiles published recently by upstate newspapers, and both are worth a look.

   On Sunday, The Daily Gazette took a look at second-year Schenectady football coach Carmen DePoalo, whose brush with the law was well documented over the summer. More recently, he's turned the football program into a winner

   "[P]arents and school officials credit DePoalo, a blunt, no-nonsense disciplinarian, with building a winning atmosphere," the story says. "His players, they say, are expected to focus on school and think about college. He is not averse to benching players, no matter how valuable they are to the team, if they’re not performing in the classroom. He allows players to miss practice to get help on schoolwork and stays in touch with their teachers via e-mail. He doesn’t let his players wear hats or do-rags. He describes himself as a disciplinarian but also as someone who cares deeply about his players."

   Earlier this month, The Post-Standard caught up with girls soccer standout Nicole Close, who transferred to Baldwinsville after becoming academically ineligible at Cicero-North Syracuse at the end of the spring semester.

   Her situation has been the subject of nasty e-mails and online forum postings throughout the fall season.

   "We've never had any hate in our lives until this happened," said Diane Close, the player's mother. "Then all of a sudden people are coming out of the woodwork hating us. It came from nowhere."

   Doctor, doctor: And then there was last week's feature by Josh Thomson of The Journal News, examining the role of dentists in repairing some of the damage done on the field or the ice.

   One tale in the feature describes Dr. Donald J. Salomon working on an NHL player who was hit in the face by a puck.

   "At the tail end of his last season with the Rangers, defenseman Ron Greschner was struck by a puck. The next morning, he had three or four root canals in one excruciating sitting," Thomson wrote. "Salomon can't remember the exact number all these years later, only that the night before, he had extracted parts of two teeth and shaved others as Greschner sat in the trainer's room between periods. The mangled defenseman never missed a shift.

   "'That night,' Salomon said, 'he drank his beer through a straw.'"