Leading off today: Chris Hodge pitched a no-hitter last night but it wasn't nearly enough to save his job.

   All nine residents addressing his status spoke glowingly of the work Hodge has done as athletic director at Gates Chili, but it was too little and too late. Meeting in executive session earlier in the night, the school board had already accepted a resignation that Hodge says he submitted under protest.

   Hodge, who was instrumental in the construction of Gates Chili’s new field house and coordinating the associated logistics issues of keeping the affected teams running smoothly, will serve out the the fourth year at the suburban Rochester school and then be replaced July 1.

   It ends, for now, what have been a relatively chaotic couple of weeks in the community. More than 350 people turned out at the school board meeting, though many of them were there to plead against proposed budget cuts. The meeting was nearly 2½ hours old before speakers had a chance to show their support for Hodge.

   One of them was a man who started a Facebook group in support of Hodge, and membership grew from 65 to about 225 in the 72 hours leading up to the meeting. He was cut off by board President Mary Frances Johnson as he began to speculate about inappropriate behavior by other district employees, and that was as close as the audience got to a possible explanation about the resignation.

   The board did not issue a statement regarding Hodge; like most organizations it has a policy against commenting in public on personnel issues.

   Whatever the cause of his departure, Hodge insisted be has done nothing wrong and has nothing to hide. He's consulted with a lawyer, and the board's next dealing with him may be in court.

   "If they had the dirt I wouldn't be looking to try and fight it," he told supporters in a hallway as the board meeting crept on into its third hour.

   Hodge, a former Buffalo resident and Cortland State graduate who returned to upstate New York after working as a school administrator at Calvert County High School in Maryland, was the Monroe County League's first black AD when he arrived at Gates Chili in July 2005, but he said he does not believe race was an issue.

   More than anything Hodge, who is married with two children attending the high school, is disappointed that he

made it through all the hassles related to construction and won't be here in the fall when the athletic program starts its first "normal" year since 2006.

   I'm disappointed," he said. "For the years that I've been here I've met all my goals. I've received merit pay and never been on an improvement plan. So it's kind of hard take."

   After many years as a lumbering giant, Gates Chili has been on the upswing in sports in recent years. The current senior class leaves with Section 5 championships in football and basketball, the launch of lacrosse and field hockey programs puts Gates Chili on a par with most of the area's other larger districts and the new field house drew rave reviews from fans attending Section 5 girls basketball tournament games.

   "We ran a very successful program," Hodge said. "That's what we did, and nobody has ever told me to this day that the administration of the athletic program was not done well. It's not in writing anywhere, it's not on the evaluation. That's the disappointing part."

   A bad matchup: There was a good piece of reading in Newsday today from Gregg Sarra, who examined East Islip's 35-0 blowout of Copiague in a softball game halted last week after 4½ innings by the mercy rule.

   I've written in the past about some football scores that left a bad taste in more than a few mouths but Sarra points out that East Islip coach Stephanie Nardone, who has a 141-30-1 record in eight seasons, took numerous measures to avoid a massacre, resorting to station-to-station baserunning and pulling starters in the second inning.

   "Who knew our younger players would hit so well?" Nardone said. "I was excited for them because they were getting a chance to play. And I was impressed with the way Copiague hung in there and picked each other up. I don't want kids to feel bad on either side but I didn't know how to turn it off."

   Canandaigua comes up short: Fresh off a win on Saturday over the then-No. 1 team in the country, the Canandaigua girls lacrosse team played the new No. 1 and came up short yesterday, dropping a 9-8 final to Alexandria (Va.) St. Stephen’s/St. Agnes in the middle game of a three-game mid-Atlantic road trip.

   Kelly Austin, the daughter of TV fitness instructor Denise Austin, scored with 6.5 seconds left to earn the victory. Austin, who will attend Virginia in the fall, finished with four goals for the Saints (13-1). Abbey Friend scored three goals for the Braves, who led 8-6.