NYSSWA blog: Union-Endicott duals preview

Leading off today: Fresh off a championship in its own annual wrestling tournament, Spencerport goes into tomorrow's Union-Endicott Duals as the top seed in the state's most competitive annual wrestling tournament.

The Rangers won the 2008 championship with a 33-14 victory over Fulton in the final to all but sew up their fifth New York State Sportswriters Association championship in eight seasons.

Spencerport and Phoenix have first-round byes. Monroe-Woodbury and Amsterdam round out the top four seeds for the 14-team event, which begins at 8:30 a.m. (See: Complete brackets)

"You look at these teams, and we're just stressing to our guys to wrestle hard for six minutes," fourth-year U-E coach John Giacche told The Press & Sun-Bulletin. "It's an exciting lineup of teams. We could wrestle very well and have a rough day. You knock off one of these teams and it makes your day."

More wrestling: Fredonia 96-pounder Carlene Sluberski became the first female champion in the 43-year history of Spencerport's Teike/Bernabi Invitational this week. Six other titles were won by defending state champions: Ian Paddock (Warsaw, 135), Zach Clemente (LaSalle, 145), Ryan Leblanc (Morrisville-Eaton, 160), Austin Meys (Shenendehowa, 171), Paul Glover (Spencerport, 215) and Ken Altarac (LaSalle, heavyweight).

Meys, by the way, says he'll stay at 189 for the season

Also worth checking out

Boys basketball page

rather than try to get back down to defend at 171. He could be heading for a showdown in March against Brockport's Christian Boley, who placed third in Division 1 at 189 a year ago and was the subject of a Democrat and Chronicle feature this week.

Extra points: A Section 5 source confirms the rumor that Steve Romano has been selected as the new football coach at Penfield, pending approval from the school board. Romano was 15-3 at Webster Schroeder in 2004-05 before returning to the St. John Fisher College staff, where he also worked from 2001-03.

No. 11 Sherman and No. 13 Clymer will meet Tuesday in a good girls Class D basketball matchup that could be indicative of who'll play in the state semifinals in March. . . . Bishop Ludden basketball coach Pat Donnelly shoots for career victory No. 400 in 21 seasons tonight vs. East Syracuse-Minoa.

Just got done reading a rip job aimed at a certain girls basketball team that I won't identify other than to say it's located east of Cleveland, west of Boston, south of Toronto and north of Williamsport. And trust me when I say that my geography is a hell of a lot more precise than the logic and "facts" employed by the author. Thank God he only gets to write weekly instead of daily.