Best in Upstate: State softball championships on the move

Best in Upstate

John Moriello, who has been an ardent follower and commentator on New York high school sports for decades, is writing a weekly column called "Best In Upstate," which is designed to fly above all of the state sectional borders. You can reach John at nysswa@gmail.com or @nysswa on Twitter. He oversees the New York State Sportswriters Association web page of high school rankings.

"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt."

The quote is frequently attributed to Abraham Lincoln or Mark Twain, which is hardly surprising since both men knew how to turn a phrase, and I was reminded of its wisdom Wednesday morning while poking around on social media sites and looking for material for the day's blog.

A day earlier, my blog on the New York State Sportswriters Association website was coming up a little bit short and none of the online sources I scour for material had anything interesting to report. Looking at my calendar, I realized that the New York State Public High School Athletic Association's softball committee was due to meet the following day.

Knowing that the most important item on their agenda was the selection of a venue for the 2020 through '22 state tournament semifinals and finals, I started writing filler material that said it would be a surprise if anyplace other than Moreau Recreation Park submitted a bid, let alone a winning one. That complex an hour north of Albany is two-thirds of the way through its second three-year contract and I've never heard much in the way of complaints about the site.

However, something told me at the last minute to play it safe, ditch the item and settle for summarizing the vote result the following day. So what if the Tuesday blog came up a little short; it's not as though I get paid by the word even if readers of this weekly column suspect otherwise.

Well, that turned out to be fortunate because the tournament's nine-year stay in Section 2 — it was played in Queensbury the three years before Moreau Rec won the right to host — will conclude next June. The NYSPHSAA staff and the softball committee concurred Wednesday that Moriches Athletic Complex in Suffolk County had the superior bid.

Permanent lighting and four artificial turf fields that can stand up to soaking rains made the Long Island facility an attractive choice, especially since the financials of the bids were reportedly reasonably close.

With the way the tournament brackets are constructed, the two Long Island sections of the NYSPHSAA can count on between two and four teams making it to Moriches Athletic Complex each June, and they'll have much shorter bus trips than the treks to upstate locations facing their counterparts in most sports.

On the other hand, plenty of Section 2 schools are going to miss the home cooking on the final weekend of the season. The Capital Region sent teams in all five classes to last spring's championship day and four teams in each of the previous five years. It added up to six championships for the section.

I doubt Lincoln or Twain ever uttered the trite "easy come, easy go," but the softball committee decision came on the heels of the boys basketball committee decision to move the boys basketball championships from Binghamton to Glens Falls, also in Section 2, beginning in 2020.

By the way, the next NYSPHSAA championship contract up for bids is girls tennis for 2020-22, which will be determined Jan. 8. Figure on multiple bids to be examined a month later when the sites for the boys lacrosse semifinals as well as the finals are selected.

Here comes the judge

Boys Class A basketball teams across the state will be keeping an eye on State Supreme Court in Buffalo in Monday. That's where and when Justice Dennis Ward is expected to render his decision on the eligibility appeal of star senior guard Juston Johnson.

Without Johnson, West Seneca West is just another above-average basketball team. With him, the team would become an instant contender for a state championship on the heels of last season's 24-1 record.

Johnson was ruled ineligible by Section 6 before the season because New York State Education Department regulations specify that playing at the varsity level as a seventh-grader starts a six-year clock ticking on an athlete's career. This is year seven for Johnson, who repeated eighth grade in his school building after being home schooled the year before while recovering from an arm injury.

Johnson wants the court to issue an order making him eligible to play while awaiting the outcome of an appeal to the State Education Department. It's possible that decision won't come down before February — the wheels in the commissioner's office turn slowly — and the player's family argues that could significantly harm his college recruitment.

Speaking of college ...

Wednesday marks the start of the three-day early signing period for Division I football, during which college coaches try to formalize commitments from as many of their top prospects as possible. Those who don't sign by Friday will have to wait until early February to sign.

This is not a banner year for New York. After seeing 34 seniors — a very high number for New York — sign on with Football Bowl Subdivision programs a year ago, schools around the state might not be able to boast of much more than a dozen scholarship players this time around.

The state's most coveted prospect, Brooklyn Canarsie defensive end Adisa Isaac, has not announced a decision yet although it's widely assumed he'll end up at Penn State.

Basketball prodigies update

The state's most discussed scholastic athlete so far this century is picking up right where he left off as both a football and basketball player.

Glens Falls senior Joe Girard III, the state's all-time leading scorer in basketball has put up 53 and 57 points in his two most recent basketball games. The Syracuse University recruit who averaged 50 points a game as a junior, started relatively slowly this season with "just" 34 and 41 points in the Indians' opening pair of games.

That relatively small numbers weren't unexpected as Girard and numerous teammates were still making the adjustment after a football season that ended with a NYSPHSAA championship at the Carrier Dome on Thanksgiving weekend.

Girard will likely surpass 3,500 career points in his next outing and could eclipse 4,000 in early February if he stays healthy. 

In the spirit of that quote above about it being better to remain silent, I'm not going to suggest that Girard's final total will be well out of anyone's reach for a generation or more. That's because Dior Johnson has come home.

Johnson left Saugerties in Section 9 over the summer after having already amassed 1,098 varsity points while in junior high, but his stay at IMG Academy in Florida proved to be short-lived. A stress fracture in his right foot took him out of the preseason mix in a basketball program loaded with future major-college talent.

At last word, the 6-foot-3 freshman was waiting for his transfer paperwork to be approved. If all goes well, he could be back in the lineup on Tuesday for Saugerties, where he averaged 31.1 points a game. 

Assuming he stays healthy and doesn't leave for prep school at some point, averaging a little under 40 points a game for the remainder of his career would get Johnson into 4,000-point territory. Anyone who's watched him play will tell you that 40 points a game isn't unreasonable.