Scrambling to finish her second round of the Futures Tour's Alliance Bank Golf Classic before darkness hit, Seo-Jae Lee just made it - and now shares the lead.
Lee, from South Korea, and Virginia native Jenny Suh both posted nine-under-par totals of 133 at Drumlins Country Club's East Course, one better than first-round leader Angela Buzminski.
All of them got the advantage of finishing their opening rounds on Friday afternoon, so they only had to play 18 holes on a warm, windless day, optimal for scoring.
By contrast, of the 72 players that had to come back early in the morning to finish their opening rounds (the start on Friday was delayed 4 1/2 hours by rain), none finished better than Ashley Prange, at 137, five under...

CATEGORY: Golf

TAGS: Futures Tour, Alliance Bank Classic, second round

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Really, there were two different winners at the Duramed Futures Tour's Alliance Bank Golf Classic.
Jenny Suh takes the players' honors, breaking through for her first Futures win by rallying from two strokes down with seven holes to play to tie Korean Seo-Jae Lee, then prevail in a playoff.
The other, long-term champion, had to be Drumlins Country Club's fabulous East course, an old-school design that stood up quite well to all that nature tried to do to it.
Three times in five days, Drumlins East took a hit from substantial rain - on Wednesday afternoon during the first pro-am, then again on Friday (a 4 1/2 hour delay) and Sunday (more than an inch of precipitation)...

CATEGORY: Golf

TAGS: Futures Tour, final round, Jenny Suh, recap

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Today, Barack Obama turns 48, and must wonder how much nonsense one human being, even a president with a lot on the plate, must put up with.
First, there's the fiction being peddled about how he's really not an American. I'll make it simple - he has a birth certificate, Hawaii has the original, a copy is available online, two newspapers in Honolulu had the birth announcement back in August 1961. Disagree about his policies all you want, but please, PLEASE, at least acknowledge Obama's citizenship. Otherwise, you have no credibility.
Now to an actual issue - the ongoing debate about health-care reform...

CATEGORY: Government

TAGS: Health care debate, protests

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What was it about John Hughes?
A heart attack ended Hughes' life at 59 on Thursday...

CATEGORY: Movies

TAGS: John Hughes, passing, teen movies

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On this night, six men went into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, all of them worthy.
What Bruce Smith, Derrick Thomas, Bob Hayes, Randall McDaniel and Rod Woodson did on the field was special - each at a different position. Smith as a dominant defensive end, Thomas as a pass-rushing linebacker, Hayes as the fastest wide receiver of his time, McDaniel as the best guard of his era, Woodson as the complete defensive back.
Yet the induction of Ralph C. Wilson Jr. brings the most emotion. Without him, much of pro football as we know it would not be possible.
First, there's the loyalty...

CATEGORY: Football (American)

TAGS: Ralph Wilson, Hall of Fame, induction

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We know how it turned out at Firestone in Akron. Tiger Woods winning again, a seventh time, going 65-65 on the weekend, hitting ridiculous approach shots on the 16th both of those days on the way to victory no. 70 in the PGA Tour annals.
All the issue was in the way the outcome turned the last time they went around that 667-yard "Monster" called the 16th.
Padraig Harrington, otherwise superb all week, gave Tiger a chance to pull closer Saturday when he bogeyed two hours after Tiger birdied there. Then came Sunday, the decisive moment.
Actually, the decisive moment may have come on the tee...

CATEGORY: Golf

TAGS: Tiger Woods, Padraig Harrington, rules controversy

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When Arnold Palmer struck that first ceremonial first tee shot at the Masters four months ago, kicking off golf’s annual major championship quartet, a lot of assumptions were made about what would play out.
None of them involved the trio of Angel Cabrera, Lucas Glover and Stewart Cink winning at Augusta, Bethpage Black and Turnberry. And you couldn’t have imagined the constant theme of heartache that played out at these majors, either.
First Kenny Perry, up by two with two to play at Augusta, bogeying those last two holes and falling in a playoff. Then on Long Island, David Duval coming back from golf purgatory and Phil Mickelson, heart heavy with worry about his wife’s breast cancer, both finishing second...

CATEGORY: Golf

TAGS: PGA Championship, Haeltine, preview

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Barely a week ago in this space, I lamented the ugly turn that town-hall meetings across America involving various members of Congress had taken as the health-care reform debate coarsened.
And it's worse right now.
Thank Sarah Palin, if you must, with her absolutely false notion that a provision in the House bill that reimbursed Medicare recipients for consultations with doctors on end-of-life care. Oh yeah, and those consultations are optional. As in you don't have to do it. As in it's YOUR choice.
As usual, the lazy corporate media, always on the lookout for political confrontation (and the more extreme, the better), repeated Palin's "death squad" fantasy for days before pointing out that, well, it wasn't true.
Too late...

CATEGORY: Government

TAGS: Heath care debate, Part II, more anger

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To many, it was an unmitigated disaster.
They couldn't get their first choice of venue, chased out of Walkill by scared residents.
They pre-sold 186,000 tickets, but half a million showed up, all for free, knocking down fences and backing up traffic for tens of miles.
Too few bathrooms. Too little food. Lots of sanitation issues. Heavy rains turning the one-time farm into a mud pit.
The state even labeled it a disaster area, though contrary to what Arlo Guthrie said on stage, the New York State Thruway was NOT closed, man. Two babies were born. Two others died.
So went the immediate aftermath of the Woodstock Music and Arts Fair, staged 40 years ago this weekend on Max Yasgur's property in Bethel...

CATEGORY: Music

TAGS: Woodstock, 40th anniversary

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The chip shot at 14 rolls in for an eagle. An hour later, the tough approach on the brutal 18th at Hazeltine flies over the tree, over the guarding bunker, and hits a foot from the hole. The ensuing birdie seals it, and the winner pumps his fist in victory.
So ended the 91st PGA Championship, with golf's leading man in the final pairing as these clutch shots decide another major classic.
Only Tiger Woods didn't hit them. Yong-Eun Yang did.
While amazing in its own right, this was a fitting denouement to a major season where it was as much about who didn't win as who ultimately did.
Just as the Masters would be remembered for Kenny Perry's heartbreak, just as the U.S...

CATEGORY: Golf

TAGS: PGA Championship, Y.E. Yang, Tiger Woods

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Exactly 80 groups of young men went out today and, profusely sweating in the 90-plus conditions, began football practice, kicking off another high school sports season.
And the changes are plentiful, especially when it comes to the small schools.
Class C and D now have 22 schools apiece. No one moved up, but many schools went down in class, including Class C champion Westmoreland, now in D, and Holland Patent, a long-time B school shifted to the C ranks.
Mohawk and Richfield Springs have joined forces, similar to the LaFayette/Fabius-Pompey model. Both are in Class C. Rome Catholic returns to the varsity fold after some time spent building up participation with JV teams...

CATEGORY: Football (American)

TAGS: High School football, Section III, changes

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They’re starting up again.
Football teams, soccer teams, field hockey teams, runners, tennis players, some golfers – all plunging into practices for the high school fall sports season.
To so many, the sight of young men and women sweating in the summer sun, sacrificing quality teen time to contribute to a larger cause is sweet stuff, inspiring, and just the right tonic after a quiet summer on the sidelines.
We are part of that crowd, for sure, and the upcoming season gives us at Eagle a chance to reach out to our communities and ask for their help in putting together the best high-school sports coverage in Central New York.
For a long time, we used the motto “your news, your newspaper”...

CATEGORY: General Sports

TAGS: Eagle, seeking help, writers, photographers

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Not so long ago in this space, I wrote of Michael Vick and Brett Favre, two rather high-profile figures whose NFL futures remained in doubt, yet evoked high emotions.
So much for the doubts.
Vick is now in Philadelphia, bound to be a target of every animal lover in the Lower 48 despite his time served and tarnished name, something that no amount of time will ever recover.
Favre changed his mind for the 50th time and went to Minnesota after all. Either he's out to win another championship, or it's something else at work.
First Vick. As he left jail, most NFL teams went out of their way to state that they wanted no part of him, either scared away by the bad publicity, or by his two years away from the game...

CATEGORY: Football (American)

TAGS: Michael Vick, Brett Favre, Eagles, Vikings

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So I got a chance to go to the annual pre-season meeting of all the Section III football coaches at Jamesville-DeWitt Wednesday night. Not a lot of new men in charge, though Eric Ormond gets his chance at J-D and Ted Swavely assumes the hot seat at Rome Free Academy, defending a 30-year playoff streak.
Always, the best part is hearing the update on rules, even on something as rare as a score on the last play of the game that results in a tie, and what to do if there's a penalty on the defensive team.
Or on a punt, now a player on the kicking team can bat a ball backwards toward his own goal line...

CATEGORY: Football (American)

TAGS: High School football, rules changes

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One of Central New York's best high school athletes is mending at the moment.
Alex Hatz, an extraordinary distance runner about to begin his senior year at Fayetteville-Manlius, had to undergo kidney surgery yesterday in New York City.
According to head coach Bill Aris in a letter posted to tullyrunners.com (the definitive site for all Section III running devotees), Hatz had a kidney defect that needed to be addressed by going under the knife.
The surgery was successful, Aris said, and Hatz will spend a few days recuperating in the hospital before returning home, assuming all goes well.
Though Hatz will be home soon, a running regime will have to wait...

CATEGORY: Running

TAGS: Alex Hatz, F-M, runner, kidney surgery

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When does a room full of jaded, cold and cynical reporters, photographers and cameramen turn into breathless kids on Christmas morning?
The answer comes on an overcast Monday morning at Atunyote Golf Club when, security in tow, Tiger Woods walks into the tent for the brief press conference just before the start of the Notah Begay III Charity Challenge.
To be sure, Begay was there, too, as it was his event after all...

CATEGORY: Golf

TAGS: Tiger Woods, Atunyote, Notah Begay Challenge

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This past week, an anniversary of some note passed without much notice from our here-today, gone-later today pop culture. But I’m not talking about the death of someone, even if they had names of Babe or Elvis.
No, instead of mourning a premature departure, this was the anniversary of an arrival, the appearance of something so beautiful and transcendent that, half a century later, it is still talked about (at least from those in the know) with justifiable reverence.
For on Aug. 17 50 years ago, an album called “Kind of Blue” was released. What Miles Davis and his fellow musicians accomplished there was, arguably, the finest record anyone, in any genre of music, has ever made.
Travel back in time, if you will, to early 1959. Miles is atop the jazz pantheon...

CATEGORY: Music

TAGS: Miles David, "Kind of Blue", 50th anniversary, thoughts

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We knew the passing of Edward Kennedy would come shortly, any day. Yet it does not lessen, in any way, the loss felt right now.
The life of Ted Kennedy is a uniquely American one. Born into wealth, he found his cause with those far worse off. Given the chance to recover from his own maladies, he wanted to make sure that all Americans got that same chance. To him, public service - especially the 47 years he spent in the United States Senate - was a life's calling.
It didn't start out that way. He was first supposed to just be the little brother that watched as Joe Jr. got groomed to be a president by his ambitious and rich father...

CATEGORY: Government

TAGS: Ted Kennedy, death, remembrance

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So North Syracuse's 14-year-old baseball team came home from the Babe Ruth World Series in Wisconsin disappointed at a narrow defeat in the elimination round against the hosts from Appleton.
Well, if there was disappointment, at least they weren't force-fed into sharing it with the rest of the country - unlike some kids two years younger.
On the same day North Syracuse fell, teams from California and Georgia battled deep into the night at Williamsport in the U.S. semifinals of the Little League World Series...

CATEGORY: Baseball

TAGS: Little League World Series

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We'll spend the next five days, leading up to the start of the 2009 Section III high school football season, taking a brief look at each of the classes, and we'll start in the D ranks.
Before you scoff at small schools, consider that, out of this realm, teams from West Canada Valley, Onondaga, Weedsport and Dolgeville have all won state championships from the Class D ranks - five in all.
Yet this might be the deepest pool of good teams we've ever seen. The latest changes in enrollment standards has enlarged Class D (22 teams, from 16 a year ago) to a point where four divisions are needed, not two.
At the same time, the regular season in both Class D and C is just six games long and the playoffs expand to 16 teams from eight...

CATEGORY: Football (American)

TAGS: Section III, Class D football, preview

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Continuing our Section III football outlooks, we move up to Class C, where there's been just as much upheaval - teams leaving, teams arriving - and as a result, the only guarantee is that we'll have a new champion come November.
What Class D picked up, C seemed to lose, as it now has 22 teams instead of 27. However, the simultaneous expansion of the playoffs to 16, and a six-game regular season, makes it a whole lot easier to get into the post-season.
Those changes were a direct reaction to what took place in 2008. Despite a 6-1 record, General Brown did not get in the playoffs. Neither did 5-2 teams from Cooperstown and Frankfort-Schuyler. Such a quirk cannot possibly happen in this new format.
As with any substantial change, the blessings are mixed...

CATEGORY: Football (American)

TAGS: Section III, fotball, Class C preview

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