I logged onto the Internet on Monday morning and was shocked to read that Carl Spackler, the goofy assistant greens keeper from the movie Caddyshack, won the celebrity golf competition at the Pebble Beach National Pro-Am over the weekend.
Carl Spackler? Are you kidding me?
Well, actually the winner was Bill Murray, the actor who immortalized the cinema role and more or less stole the movie from great comics including Rodney Dangerfield, Chevy Chase and Ted Knight. Murray has always loved golf but has generally been more of a character than a competitor on the course. He's an honest-to-god champion now after finishing first with pro partner D.A. Points.
But Murray's victory wasn't the only sports development that had us sitting up and saying, "Huh?" That's because the New York high school scene was nuttier than the fruitcake grandma sent you for Christmas.
Here's what I mean:
* It's not as though folks didn't try other methods to break the tie, but they eventually had to flip a coin to decide that
Albertus Magnus (Bardonia) rather than Pearl River would play in the Rockland County girls basketball championship game against Clarkstown North.
Here's what happened: Albertus and Pearl River finished tied for their league title with 9-1 records. Not surprisingly, they lost only to each other in their season home-and-home series. As league officials moved through the rest of the tie-breaker checklist — conference records (14-1), records against common opponents and overall records (16-1) – there was no difference to be found.
So Pearl River Athletic Director Todd Santabarbara traveled to Albertus for the coin flip, and counterpart Joe McGuinness came out the winner.
Albertus went on to victory in the title game Saturday, beating Clarkstown North 65-44 as Kassie Kayser scored 18 points.
* Section II mistook the Green Tech Eagles for the Green Bay Packers.
Green Tech (Albany) is a charter school in the Albany area that played football at the JV level last fall, going 7-1 (including two victories by forfeit) against mostly Class B and C opponents as it continued to ramp up for its scheduled varsity debut next fall.
But the record was highly deceiving since Green Tech, an all-male school with a projected enrollment of 263 students next fall, gave up 24.5 points a game despite fielding a lineup including several juniors against opposition composed of freshmen and sophomores.
Green Tech has a promising future, but there's no way the Eagles could compete with good Class A — or even Class B — opposition next fall. Amazingly, though, the team has been placed into the Class AA Liberty Division to play the likes of Schenectady (2,140 students) and Shaker (1,563) based upon decisions by the Section II football committee in December and the Section II classification committee last week.
The section's Athletic Council still needs to sign off on the decision, but football coordinator Gary VanDerzee told The Times Union in Albany that appears to be a certainty.
"Being a charter school, the state treats them like a private school," VanDerzee told the paper. "The school has no tuition fees and is drawing kids from the Albany School District."
Still, it appears to contradict existing guidelines in the section. Bishop Maginn (Class A), Albany Academy (the same size as Green Tech and playing in B), Bishop Gibbons (D) and Saratoga Central Catholic (D) are all open-enrollment schools that play at levels lower than the state's largest class.
* Speaking of football decisions, Section I is implementing big changes for the upcoming season including a return to a 10-game local season – seven scheduled contests plus a maximum of three in sectionals – after several years of playing one less game than most of New York.
But rather than start the season in sync with the other upstate sections, Section I teams will continue to open up a week later and then catch up by conducting three rounds of playoffs in an 11-day window, which will amount to four games in 17 days for a handful of schools.
On the one hand, it makes sense because doing it during the playoffs only affects the relatively small number of schools that qualify for sectionals and keep on winning. On the other hand, condensing playoffs into a shorter window leaves no margin for error if the weather turns crazy in late October.
* The
Lincoln (Brooklyn) boys basketball team certainly had a busy (and successful) week. The Railsplitters won four games in five days, indicative of the fact they have no intention of ceding PSAL glory to the likes of Wings Academy, Boys & Girls, Cardozo or Wadleigh.
Lincoln defeated Thomas Jefferson 78-61 on Saturday for the Brooklyn borough championship as splendid senior
Shaquille Stokes put up 23 points and eight assists. A day later, the Railsplitters beat always-tough St. Raymond from the CHSAA 63-52 in the Prime Time Shootout as precocious freshman
Isaiah Whitehead connected for 18 points.
It improved the Railsplitters to 23-2 heading into the Citywide Tournament. What's most interesting, though, is that Lincoln proceeded through its busy week in the proper order by winning the borough crown and then playing at the event at Kean University in New Jersey. To be sure, losing to St. Ray's would have been a disappointment, but the Prime Time Shootout mattered a lot less than being the best in Brooklyn.
Conversely, Jefferson lost the borough final to Lincoln a day after an energy-sapping, 71-69 victory over Plainfield (N.J.) in that very same Prime Time Shootout.
John Schiano, who has written about high school sports in western and central New York for more than 25 years, covers New York for MaxPreps. He may be reached at john.schiano@maxpreps.com.
