Leading off today: Assistant Eric Loudis was promoted to boys varsity basketball coach at Schenectady this week by the school board, The Times Union reported.

   Loudis, the son of New York State Basketball Hall of Fame coach Joe Loudis, had worked for three years under Mark Sausville, who stepped down last month in order to more closely follow his son's playing career at Scotia.

   Loudis, 28, a math teacher at Schenectady since 2005, inherits a team that went 11-9 last winter.

    "I have a good rapport with the kids, so I'm not going to get blindsided," Loudis told the paper.

   Tulane lands Central N.Y. star: Syracuse CBA rising senior Greg Thomson has given a verbal commitment to continue his football career at Tulane next year.

   Thomson, a 6-foot-3, 230-pound standout in football and basketball, is at least the 14th New York player to commit to a Football Bowl Subdivision team this summer. [Full list]. The Green Wave staff reportedly anticipates using him as a combination tight end and H-back.

   Kicking off: Fall practice officially commences for most high school sports and school districts on Monday. I'm still cleaning up various files on RoadToSyracuse.com for the start of football season, and I've also begun adding material. A limited list of scrimmages was started this morning.

   For the time being it's limited to about three dozen upstate scrimmages set for Aug. 28. Feel free to use the e-mail link below to send me additional scrimmages that you know about.

   Helping out: You've got to like John Behner's approach to the most serious of subjects.

   The recent Minisink Valley graduate had his baseball season with the Warriors cut short by surgery in mid-May after being diagnosed with testicular cancer. Last week, the community came together and raised $14,000 for him in a benefit walk, The Times Herald-Record reported.

   "Being at Minisink, we are all Warriors," Behler told the crowd. "But cancer picked the wrong Warrior from the

RoadToSyracuse.com Football Site

wrong community to mess with."

   The money will help Behler, who turned 18 today, cover the cost of additional surgery following a CT scan that revealed some enlarged lymph nodes.

   College bound: Former Fayetteville-Manlius and Hamilton High coach Tom Blackford has been appointed softball coach at Morrisville State College.

   Blackford was 230-102 in softball at Hamilton and then 26-10 at F-M in 2003-04.

   His boys basketball teams were 317-138 at Hamilton with five Section 3 titles and a pair of New York State Public High School Athletic Association championships. He was 100-78 in eight seasons at F-M.

   Extra points: Emory Bellard, acclaimed as "the father of the wishbone" while an assistant at Texas and later the head coach at Texas A&M, is battling ALS. several Texas newspapers reported this week. ... Texan Brad Dalke, who recently won the SOuthwest Junior Open in Austin by 19 strokes, has given a commitment to play golf for the University of Oklahoma. What's the big deal, you ask? He's 12 years old, which means he'll be enrolling some time around 2016.