Tobias Harris leads list of Top 10 New York athletes

In the old days of high school sports – right up until the late 1980s by most accounts – three-sport stars ruled the landscape. We’re not talking about athletes who merely excelled in one sport and were pretty good in the others, but rather about performers who were among the cream of the crop in all three.
 
For decades, the classic three-sporters generally stuck to the same three playing fields. Oh, sure, a few would dabble in wrestling or track and field just to add a little variety, but the traditional triple consisted of football in the fall, basketball in the winter and baseball in the spring.
 
And it was invariably one of those types who earned the outstanding athlete award at the end of the school year from the local newspaper. (Editors note: Newspapers were kind of like those collections of stories you read now on the Internet after searching for your name on Google.com; the ads weren’t nearly as interesting though and the ink rubbed off on your fingers.)
 
Eventually, specialization came into vogue and the best athletes began concentrating on a single sport. Football players started dabbling in more strenuous offseason conditioning, attending camps and playing in 7-on-7 leagues. Basketball players began barnstorming the AAU circuit all spring and summer instead of just here and there.
 
And now the great three-sporter is pretty much obsolete, which is a bit of a shame. The up side, however, is that the era of specialists has contributed to generation after generation of players whose skills are off the charts. It’s most noticeable in individual sports where specialization tended to reign anyway – tennis, golf, swimming – but it also holds true in the major sports where 6-foot-8 basketball players bury endless strings of 3-pointers and 210-pound outfielders run down deep drives with the speed of gazelles.
 
That being said, it’s no surprise then that variety rules our annual list of New York’s top male athletes with half a dozen sports represented by the top 10 performers. Coincidentally, the top three on the list take us back to the gold old days: A basketball player, a football player and a baseball player.
 
Here are our top 10 performers of the 2009-10 school year:
 
1. Tobias Harris, Half Hollow Hills West (Dix Hills) basketball – The 6-foot-8 senior forward appears destined for stardom at Tennessee after averaging 24.7 points and leading his team to the New York State Public High School Athletic Association Class AA final. The state’s Mr. Basketball and Gatorade N.Y. player of the year is perfectly suited to blow by bigger forwards trying to chase him around the perimeter, muscle past same-sized competition and shoot jumpers over the smaller guys.
 
2. Dominique Easley, Curtis (Staten Island) football – It’s not as though no one in the Big Apple plays football, but the first-team all-state defensive end has helped dispel the notion that New York City only produces basketball players. At 6-3 and 255 pounds, he has the frame to develop into a full-time interior lineman and the speed to line up on the outside. He’ll attend the University of Florida after a recruiting process that saw schools on both coasts lining up to lure him.
 
3. Cito Culver, Irondequoit (Rochester) baseball – Culver took his first varsity swings as an eighth-grader and improved steadily throughout his career, culminating in a .561 batting average with nine home runs and 38 RBIs in just 22 games this spring. An intriguing pitching prospect for some pro organizations because of his scorching fastball, Culver’s future is in the field. Taken with the 32nd pick of the first round by the New York Yankees, he’s a switch-hitting shortstop for Tampa in the Gulf Coast League after signing for a bonus in the $950,000 range.
 
4. Nick Galasso, West Islip lacrosse – No one in New York dominated the field the way the senior attackman did in lacrosse, particularly down the stretch when he piled up 18 goals and 19 assists in six postseason victories that nailed down his fourth state championship in five seasons. The North Carolina recruit scored 66 goals and 70 assists as a senior to finish his career with 500 points, a Long Island record. He was also the MaxPreps National Player of the Year.
 
5. Alex Bramall, Newburgh Free Academy (Newburgh) soccer – The senior midfielder didn’t need various player of the year awards or National Soccer Coaches Association of America All-America status to confirm his skills. He was consistently the best player on the field as Newburgh earned its first NYSPHSAA championship by rallying past defending Class AA champion Brentwood with two goals in the final 16 minutes in Oneonta. He’ll continue his career at St. John’s.
 
6. Will Regan, Nichols (Buffalo) basketball – The last Nichols big man to move on to the ACC was Christian Laettner at Duke. At 6-foot-8, Regan isn’t as big and some aspects of his game aren’t as polished, but the University of Virginia is still getting a tremendous player who could have snared the Mr. Basketball award if voting had been done later in the season. He averaged 19.6 points and was the New York State Sportswriters Association player of the year in Class A as Nichols won the Federation championship.
 
7. Tom Schreiber, St. Anthony's (Melville) football and lacrosse – Schreiber’s dual-threat talent would have made him a desirable college football recruit if not for the fact that he happened to be one of the most coveted lacrosse players in the nation. The second-team all-state QB was 71-for-109 for 1,182 yards and eight TD passes as a senior, also rushing 101 times for 787 yards and another nine scores. On the lacrosse field, the Princeton recruit scored 45 goals and 45 assists this spring from midfield.
 
8. Mike Quercia, Marcellus track and field – The senior had an outstanding scholastic career in Central New York, capping it off with his selection as Gatorade’s N.Y. track athlete of the year after winning the outdoor 800 meters at the Federation meet in 1:50.27. He’ll continue his career at the University of Texas.
 
9. Robbie Aviles Suffern baseball – The ups and downs endured by the lanky right-handed pitcher during his senior year were almost unimaginable, beginning with the death of two teammates in a car crash while traveling to practice. Scouts swarmed the diamond every time he pitched, and Aviles looked like a first- or second-round draft prospect until partially tearing an elbow ligament during the Section I semifinals days before the draft. The injury dropped him to the seventh round and cost him as much as $750,000 in bonus money, but Aviles has passed up a University of Florida scholarship and signed with the Cleveland Indians.
 
10. Chris Secky, Maple Grove (Bemus Point) football and basketball – The latest in a string of talented athletes in the family, Secky finished his career with an unprecedented five N.Y. player of the year awards from the New York State Sportswriters Association – two in football and three in basketball. He quarterbacked Maple Grove to a state football title in 2008 and capped his career by averaging 21.3 points a game and steering the basketball team to its second state title in three years. The 6-foot-2 guard will continue his basketball career at Division II LeMoyne in Syracuse.
 
Next best: Alex Deir (sr., Honeoye Falls-Lima, distance running), Andrew Jean-Baptiste (sr., Brentwood, soccer), Jayvaughn Pinkston (jr., Bishop Loughlin, basketball), Nick Arujau (sr., Syosset, wrestling), Eric DeJohn (sr., Jamesville-DeWitt, lacrosse).