Troy native Joe Mahoney, right, accepts the Brooks Robinson award on Fri., Sept. 17 at Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore. Mahoney was named the Orioes' top minor league position player in 2010. (Photos provided by Todd Olszewski, Team Photographer, Baltimore Orioles).
The Record will publish a story on Mahoney's journey through the minor leagues on Sunday, Sept. 26, so keep your eyes open for that.
Mahoney, who grew up playing for Catholic Central High School and the Lansingburgh Royals, played dozens of games at beautiful Knickerbacker Park in the 'Burgh. I was curious if Mahoney had used the Major League Baseball monument in the park, located just beyond the right field foul pole, as motivation during his career. It lists all of the Collar City natives who have gone on to play in the Major Leagues.
Mahoney said he never knew it was there.
The Major League Baseball Monument in Lansingburgh's Knickerbacker Park. (Record file photo).
The monument sits on a historic slice of real estate for Troy's baseball history. The city played host to a professional team in the 1860s and '70s known as the Troy Haymakers, who gave way to the Troy Trojans, a National League team that called the Collar City home from 1879 to 1882. The Trojans are widely considered the origin of today's San Francisco Giants. As professional baseball expanded into larger markets, the Trojans were disbanded following the 1882 season. About half of the members of the New York Gothams, later the New York Giants, were former Trojans players.
Anyway...
Mahoney is hoping to catch on either with Baltimore's AAA affiliate in Norfolk or the big club coming out of spring training in 2011. Of course, the Knickerbacker Park monument would have to be updated should Mahoney ever appear in a big league uniform.
Again, for more on that story, be sure to check out Sunday's edition of The Record.
Joe Mahoney’s baseball card
South Troy Dodgers (2003-05) Avg., G, AB, R, H, 2b, 3b, HR, RBI
.411, 113, 380, 87, 156, 43, 4, 17, 138 University of Richmond (2005-07) Avg., G, AB, R, H, 2b, 3b, HR, RBI
.310, 171, 672, 121, 208, 35, 2, 31, 152 Minor leagues 2007 – Aberdeen (short season Class A, New York-Penn League) Avg., G, AB, R, H, 2b, 3b, HR, RBI
.269, 65, 242, 31, 65, 10, 2, 9, 44 2008 – Delmarva (long season Class A, South Atlantic League) Avg., G, AB, R, H, 2b, 3b, HR, RBI
.222, 95, 352, 37, 78, 22, 1, 7, 61 2009 – Delmarva (108 games) & Frederick (seven games, High Class A, Carolina League) Avg., G, AB, R, H, 2b, 3b, HR, RBI
.278, 115, 425, 63, 118, 20, 7, 8, 58 2010 – Frederick (72 games) & Bowie (52 games, Class AA Eastern League) Avg., G, AB, R, H, 2b, 3b, HR, RBI
.307, 124, 462, 67, 142, 30, 2, 18, 78
Mahoney, left, poses with Zach Britton, who earned the minor league Pitcher of the Year Award, which is named after Jim Palmer.
Local baseball players in the pros – 2010 report card
Pitchers
Eric Beaulac, SP (Troy High School)
2010 – St. Lucie (21 games, Class A, Florida State League) and Binghamton (two games, Class AA Eastern League)
Games, Starts, W-L, ERA, IP, K, BB
23, 21, 5-7, 3.98, 108.2, 79, 62
Tommy Kahnle, RP (Shaker High School/South Troy Dodgers)
2010 – Staten Island Yankees (short season Class A, New York-Penn League)
Games, W-L, ERA, IP, K, BB
11, 0-0, 0.56, 16.0, 25, 5
Section II coaches and players tackling brain concussions head-on
(Note: This story first appeared in the Kickoff 2010 preview section on Thurs., Sept. 2).
SCHAGHTICOKE -- Jacob Shave wasn’t planning on playing football at Hoosic Valley High School this season because two of the most important people in his life – his mother and his doctor – feared he runs the risk of sustaining yet another concussion.
Playing rough games of sandlot football with his friends, Shave had accidentally taken knees to the temple and received concussions four times. He loves the game, but the idea of another blow to the head had kept him away from signing up for the high school team.
"Me and my mom both were kind of worried about concussions because if I get another one it’s not good," said Shave, who enters his sophomore year of school next week. "I’ve already had four or five. That was my reason for not joining in the first place, last year or this year. That was the only thing that had run through my mind."
Hoosic Valley High School sophomore Jacob Shave is playing his first year of organized tackle football in 2010 after having received at least four concussions in the past playing backyard football. (Photo by Will Montgomery - The Record).
Yet with the Indians, a Class C team, suffering from a lack of numbers, head coach Jay Garvey needed players to keep the fifth-year program afloat. Garvey saw Shave running laps around the track at the high school as the team trudged out for practice during the first week of training camp. Aware of why Shave was holding out on signing up, Garvey still implored him to change his mind.
"For kids like Jake, who we know is concussion-prone, we try and play him at receiver instead of running back so there is a little less contact," Garvey said. "We’ll be careful when we do full contact drills. It’s all common-sense stuff. I’m sure everyone is doing it. It’s definitely a good thing that everyone is doing it instead of what we used to do."
Knowing his coach had his best interests at heart, Shave had a discussion with his mother and decided to give organized tackle football a chance, all risks considered.
"She was hesitant and she never wanted me to join football because of the concussions. And my doctor didn’t think it was a good idea," said Shave. "But she realized because I’ve been kind of bothering her about it for the past couple of years now. I think she realized that I wanted to do it. It was just one of those things I want to get done."
What exactly is a concussion?
A brain concussion occurs when a person’s head comes to a sharp stop, causing the brain to slide violently inside the fluid layer that insulates the skull. Brain cells panic and fire neurotransmitters in a rapid burst, often causing receptors in the brain to become blocked. Short-term and long-term memory may be lost and other symptoms include nausea, confusion and blurred vision.
Leading scientists believe that one concussion makes future head trauma incidents more likely to become concussions, as even a less violent event will cause a similar injury the original event.
One of the biggest issues in treating concussions is that no clear, standard definition for a concussion exists. Players suffering from dehydration, for example, may exhibit dizziness or lightheadedness and complain of headaches, which could skew an overly-cautions doctor’s diagnosis toward a concussion and unnecessarily keep a player off the field.
What’s worse, many student-athletes ignore the symptoms or battle through them trying to play it tough.
"My first concussion, things were just really blurry and it was hard to see," said Shave. "I had half of my vision. The second time, basically, it was black spots where you can’t see much. The third and fourth times were a lot like the second time.
"Nothing is really easy to do. You can’t think straight. I remember my doctor asking me who the president of the United States was and I said ‘George Washington."
Like Shave, Hunter McCarthy, a junior quarterback at the Albany Academy, has already had four concussions. A three-sport athlete at Academy, McCarthy has not suffered his concussions on the football field. Basketball and baseball were the culprits for him.
"The first time I had one, I’m not really sure when it was, probably a couple of years ago," McCarthy said. "I was playing basketball. I don’t remember much when it happened. But I remembered the next couple of days, anytime you get out of bed or stand up, you get really dizzy and you just don’t feel like yourself. It takes a week or two to start feeling normal again."
Albany Academy junior quarterback Hunter McCarthy plays only on the offensive side of the ball, partly because of his concussion history. (Photo by Mike McMahon - The Record).
Treatment strategies for concussions vary, but minimizing exposure to external stimuli is one of the most popular. Former University of Florida quarterback Tim Tebow famously holed up in a dark room after sustaining a concussion in a game against Kentucky in Sept. 2009, trying to let his brain relax and not bombard it with music, television, reading or conversation.
Later that season, Texas Tech head coach Mike Leach was accused of banishing sophomore wide receiver Adam James to a dark equipment garage after James was diagnosed with a concussion and showed up to practice in sunglasses and street clothes.
In December of 2009, the NFL imposed new rules which force from a game or practice any player who exhibits any sign of a concussion and bans them from returning to action that day. Posters have also been placed in every NFL team’s locker room, alerting players to symptoms and encouraging them to speak up to the coaching staff if they believe a teammate is hiding a concussion-type injury from the organization.
A number of former NFL players who recently died in middle age were posthumously diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy in autopsies, a condition forensic pathologist Bennet Omalu likened to "a 90-year-old brain with advanced Alzheimer’s" Disease.
Even professional baseball has taken steps to prevent concussions. This season, all minor league players were required to wear the Rawlings S100 model – David Wright of the New York Mets and Francisco Cervilli of the New York Yankees were among those who wore it in the big leagues – which is much larger than a standard batting helmet because of an extra layer of synthetic foam.
Still, all the padding in the world can’t stop the root cause of concussions, which is the acceleration and sudden stopping of the momentum of the brain. Another type of injury helmets cannot protect against is a rotational concussion, where the brain twists, tearing brain fibers and causing permanent damage.
National rates
Although concussions are notoriously difficult to track, a number of medical organizations have attempted to intelligently guess just how wide-spread is the epidemic.
The Journal of Athletic Training reported in 2007 that an estimated 300,000 sports-related traumatic brain injuries occur annually in the United States. For people aged 15-24, sports are the second-leading cause of concussions behind motor vehicle crashes.
The National Athletic Trainers Association released a report in 2009 that claimed between four and six percent of high school football players sustain concussions in a given year, which equals an estimated 43,200 to 67,200 injuries annually.
A study conducted by the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio from 2005-08, which studied 100 high schools around the country, estimated that 130,000 high school athletes report concussions each year. Of the nine sports studied, girls soccer provided the second-highest concussion rate, a figure considerably higher than their counterparts on the boys soccer teams. In fact, rates of concussions for girls were higher in basketball as well.
Countless young people also receive concussions in unsupervised situations, many of which go unreported or worst of all, undiagnosed.
What are the solutions?
For local high school coaches, the first step in addressing the concussion issue is understanding how to know when to pull a player out of practice and send them to an athletic trainer or the doctor.
Cohoes head football coach James Ducharme is among the local coaches who attended a concussion seminar at the Glen Sanders Mansion in Scotia in recent years.
Cohoes High School head coach James Ducharme is one of many local coaches who have attended concussion-awareness workshops in the offseason. (Photo by J.S. Carras - The Record).
"We tell our kids from the beginning, if you get hit and if you get lightheaded or dizzy or if something doesn’t feel right, you need to let us know right away," said Ducharme. "As a coach, you can see it in a kid 90% of the time if he got hit hard and if he gets up and he seems a little woozy. But sometimes we don’t see that and you have to rely on the kid to tell us."
At Hoosick Falls, head coach Ron Jones praised Superintendent Kenneth Facin and Athletic Director Mike Lilac for being "ahead of the curve" on the issue, bringing the school doctor in to give a seminar on athletic injuries to the district’s coaches. Half of the presentation focused on concussions.
Hoosick Falls head coach Ron Jones, pictured above with his team during the first week of practice, said that the health and safety of his players is his No. 1 concern, as it should be with all coaches. (McMahon photo - The Record).
"That’s the understanding now. You can’t tough out a concussion," Jones said. "It’s a serious thing and I don’t know if the guys hid their symptoms before or if they’re worse now. I think we’re seeing more size and speed at every level and even the high school impact is going to increase. I like the idea that they’re recommending that they shouldn’t even be returning to school until they’ve had time to rest."
Hunter McCarthy and his head coach, Tony Fruscio, both celebrated the work of Academy’s athletic trainer, Ron Hutchins. Academy gives all of its contact sports athletes a baseline test prior to any activity, which Hutchins and the coaching staff can refer to and compare the results in case they suspect a player has sustained a concussion.
Albany Academy head coach Tony Fruscio leans on his training staff to keep on top of the health of his players. (Montgomery photo - The Record).
"I think the policing and the training staffs really looking at it is up," Fruscio said. "You need the training staff to be looking at these head injuries that can affect your life forever, not just thinking about one game. One game isn’t that important."
At Tamarac, a switch to Riddell’s Revolution Concussion Reduction Technology helmets – the slightly funky-looking headgear popularized by NFL players such as Peyton Manning and advertised to decrease concussion risk by 31% - has solved some of the Bengals’ headache issues.
Tamarac head coach Erick Roadcap talks to his team after a practice in training camp. The Bengals have awarded Riddell Revoultion helmets to the players known to be concussion-prone. (Montgomery photo - The Record).
"Revolution helmets have seemed to helped me a little bit," head coach Erick Roadcap said. "We have a little bit of an older style that we rotate out and we get six new helmets a year. We use those with a few kids. It’s the same two kids. It’s always consistently the same kids and what alleviated it was switching the helmets."
At Shaker, first-year head coach Greg Sheeler says he has his players checking the inflatable bladders in their helmets daily to ensure a proper fit.
Are kids giving up football for safer pastimes?
A number of high school football programs were forced to dissolve during the first week of practice when it was evident the teams would not have enough players to survive a full season at the varsity level. The New York State Public High School Athletic Association mandates that teams must dress at least 16 healthy players for each game.
There is no direct evidence to support the idea that children are abandoning football for "safer" sports. According to the Center for Injury Research and Policy’s report, football, at 4.36 injuries per 1,000 athlete exposures, is riskiest sport for all injuries, which factored in reports of sprains or strains, concussions, contusions, fractures, lacerations, dislocations, heat illness, asthma attacks and skin infections.
Wrestling was second with 2.50 injuries per 1,000 athlete exposures (defined as a standard practice or game situation that presented a chance for injury), followed by boys soccer (2.43), girls soccer (2.36) and girls basketball (2.01).
Cohoes’ James Ducharme will dress just 18 players most of the season. all personal reasons aside, he thinks more high school students should be playing sports instead of sitting at home on the couch, playing video games.
"I even said to my athletic director today, I think New York State should make some kind of educational law that a kid needs to play one athletic sport a year," Ducharme said during the first week of practice. "They miss out on so much. If they’re not playing an athletic sport, maybe they should be in the band or chorus, because that’s just like a sport with the amount of time they prepare. I think something has to be done to get kids more involved in their extracurriculars in school.
"I think it would do wonders to a small school like us or Chatham," Ducharme continued. "Even Ravena, their numbers are down and that isn’t like them. They have a storied history."
While many local football coaches were lamenting a lack of numbers this season, each and every one that spoke with The Record for this story admitted that they are taking the concussion issue very seriously.
The players, on the other hand, especially the concussion-prone, are doing their best to put their injury history behind them once they step onto the field.
Entering his third year as the starting quarterback at Academy, McCarthy is one of the team’s best athletes. Still, the Cadets’ coaching staff hesitates to use him on both sides of the ball, primarily out of respect for his injury history.
"I don’t play defense, so that helps," McCarthy said. "Sometimes you have to block it out because if you’re worrying about it the whole time, you’re not playing as well as you can."
In Schaghticoke, Shave cannot wait to finally don a jersey and tie up his cleats to play in a football game that matters, not a backyard game of two-hand touch. Mostly, he’s looking forward to popping the buckles on his helmet so he can leave the thought of having another concussion in the back of his mind.
"I’m not really taking any extra precautions," said Shave. "I figure the helmet is enough safety for me, I hope, anyway. I hope there is not anybody big enough to break the helmet through. That’s the only fear I have."
Three's company: Spring Youth Baseball looking to challenge Dodgers and Royals in Troy's crowded summer baseball scene
Spring Youth Baseball has taught the youngsters of the Collar City the game of baseball for many years, but the organization is now hoping to extend its offerings to Troy's teenagers as well.
Members of the Troy Renegades 15-and-under baseball team run sprints during a practice Wednesday evening at the Turnpike Elementary School Field in Lansingburgh. (All photos by J.S. Carras - The Record).
I spent part of this week investigating the rise of the Spring Youth Baseball program this week and found the 15-and-under Troy Renegades travel team a particularly interesting example of what the organization has to offer. For the full story, pick up a copy of Sunday's edition of The Record.
Greg Scott throws batting practice for the Troy Renegades during Wednesday's practice at Turnpike Elementary School in Lansingburgh.
For the Renegades, the story starts at their local Little League fields in Lansingburgh, Brunswick and Twin Town, just to name a few. But around the age of 10 or 11 - about five years ago - this team came together at Spring Youth Baseball, near the Emma Willard School campus in Troy.
The players and their parents believed that Spring would offer them a better challenge on the diamond than they would receive elsewhere.
As 12-year-olds, they finished in third place in a qualifying tournament for the Cal Ripken World Series. A year later, they won the 13-and-under AABC World Series in Michigan. Last year, the team was seeded first after pool play in a World Series in Lynchburg, Va.
This summer, the Renegades are headed to a national tournament in Nashville, which starts this week. They also hope to clinch a berth to the AABC World Series in Owasso, Oklahoma, which begins in early August.
From left to right, Troy Renegades teammates Ryan McGrath, Greg Ruddy and Greg Hotaling, take a moment to chat with The Record following Wednesday's practice.
Ultimately, Spring Youth Baseball is hoping that the pioneering Renegades pave the way for baseball for players aged four through 18 at Spring in the near future.
Spring is planning to construct two or three more smaller fields to give more opportunities to the four to eight year-old players just learning the game.
Spring will also have a permanent home for its 13-and-older teams with a 90-foot diamond somewhere in the city in 2011. They hope to draw some of the top teams from the Northeast to Troy for games, just like their neighbors, the Lansingburgh Royals and the South Troy Dodgers.
Is it a crazy idea? Sure it is. The Capital Region has an established path for talented players to follow to college baseball and beyond, but the folks at Spring seriously believe that they have the energy and the passion necessary to push a brand-new program for teenagers into the stratosphere of local baseball.
"I told these kids, as long as you’re having fun and you continue to do it, I’ll use every ounce of vacation I have you," said head coach Kevin McGrath. "I’m also on the City Council, which is a job in itself.
"I miss a couple of meetings here and there, but it’s worth it," he continued. "You only get one shot, you really do. So it’s worth it. To see these kids start to get looked at by colleges, it’s worth it. It really is."
Kevin McGrath oversees practice Wednesday evening as head coach of the Troy Renegades 15-and-under baseball team.
Greg Ruddy throws extra baseballs in a bucket. A rising junior at Troy High, Ruddy is wearing his breast cancer awareness t-shirt, a cause of great importance to the Troy High program.
It will be interesting to monitor Spring's progress over the years and see if they can meet the ambitious goals they've set out to accomplish. Again, for the full story, check out Sunday's edition of The Record.
The cost of summer sports: The Record's Ben Franklin project
For the Fourth of July, every newspaper in our chain set out to compose a number of feature stories on some of the most interesting and controversial topics on our beats. Andrew Santillo and I worked together to write three pieces on the cost of summer sports and what the increasing importance of the offseason has to do with the high school sports scene.
For the main story on the costs associated with chasing down the scholarship dream, click here.
College coaches from across the country attended the GymRat Challenge, an AAU Tournament recently held at Siena College and UAlbany. (Photo by Mike McMahon - The Record).
For a story on the state of the three-sport athlete, click here.
Andrew Santillo investigated how the rest of the world approaches youth sports, finding that the United States is one of the few countries where "pay to play" is a rule, not an exception. For the full story, click here.
Our Ed Weaver also wrote a piece on Major League Baseball memories of some Collar City-area baseball fans. To read that, click here.
For links to all of The Record's Ben Franklin Project stories, click here.
-- Now that I'm back from vacation, what do you want to read about this summer? What are we missing out there?
The Don of CCHS basketball; Faces in the Crowd and Sunday Profile nominees
Former Catholic Central High School boys basketball coach Don Bassett coached the Crusaders from 1968 to 1984. (File photo by J.S. Carras - The Record).
The Record's sports editor, Kevin Moran, wrote a comprehensive story on the legendary career of former Catholic Central basketball coach Don Bassett that appeared in Sunday's edition of The Record.
Bassett won 304 games in 22 seasons as a high school basketball coach — he won more than 250 at CCHS, where he won 80 percent of his games.
Sunday, Bassett will be inducted into the Capital District Basketball Hall of Fame. The ceremony will be held at the Crown Plaza in Albany. The induction is open to the public. Tickets are priced at $70. Two of Bassett’s former players, Tom Bacher and Rod Owens, will also be part of the Hall of Fame Class of 2010.
We'll have more on this year's Hall of Fame class all this week in The Record.
-- We're also featuring two new pieces of our retooled Sunday section.
First is Faces in the Crowd. Click here to see last week's nominees. Do you know of a local team (at any level) or person that deserves to be recognized as one of our Faces in the Crowd? Please send us your information and a picture. (Follow the directions in the above link).
We're also looking for individuals to describe in our Sunday Profile. Here is one on John Hudson, the head groundskeeper at Joseph L. Bruno Stadium.
Please send us your nominees!
(Update, 12:01 a.m.): Let me throw Monday's local baseball roundup on this post as well.
Local baseball Sandy Koufax 13-and-under Lansingburgh 15, Queensbury 14: Connor McDonough went 5-for-5 to lift the Lansingburgh Royals over the Queensbury T’Wolves in a Sandy Koufax game Monday evening. Greg Howard added a double and a single for Lansingburgh. Jarred Jarose was the Royals’ winning pitcher. Queensbury’s Kyle Chambers collected three singles. Mickey Mantle Hoosick Falls 11, Albany 9: Josh Mulready hit an RBI triple and scored three runs to lead Hoosick Falls to a Mickey Mantle victory over Albany Monday evening. Randy Tutunjian chipped in with a two-run triple, Steve Colvin hit an RBI double that broke a tie in the sixth inning and Alex Lilac provided three innings of scoreless relief for Hoosick Falls (4-6). Albany’s Terrell Bickley hit a pair of singles and drove in a run for Albany (6-4). HOOSICK FALLS 11, ALBANY 9 Albany (6-4) 210 600 0 - 9 5 1 Hoosick Falls (4-6) 102 413 x - 11 8 1 Bickley, Worden (6) and Berghela J.Brogue, Mosso (2), Lilac (4) and L.Brogue. Twilight League Athletics win doubleheader: Jim Shook hurled a complete game, 7-hitter and added to his league lead in strikeouts by fanning 11 batters as the Albany Athletics posted a 10-1 victory over the Blue State Bluehawks. In the nightcap, John Marcella hit a grand slam to lift the A’s to a 14-3 victory over the Albany Senators. The Athletics, 15-3 overall, took sole control of first place with a 10-2 mark in Twilight League action.
The costs of summer baseball - the Ben Franklin Project
With local families spending in upwards of $1,000 per summer per athlete to have them compete on elite-level travel teams, we here at The Record are curious and are looking for your input. Is this a good thing or a bad thing?
On July 4, all newspapers in our chain will be publishing an edition through the use of free online tools only. But that's only half the story. We're also looking for you, the readers, to help us tell your stories. It's part of a one-time only edition, but we're also looking to make this a regular piece of how we put the paper together every day. For more information, click here to read more on the Ben Franklin project.
Do you have any horror stories from money wasted on fees for travel teams? Or did that experience help you (or your son or daughter) earn a Division I or Division II scholarship that saved a pile of money in the long run?
Because of this specialization, is the three-sport athlete dead?
We value your stories, experiences and ideas and would greatly appreciate your input in putting this project together. If you would like to share, please contact me via email at troyrecordsports AT gmail DOT com or call me at the office at 518-270-1246.
A money-conscious subconscious: hypnotherapy and promotion in high school sports
Shaker High School sprinter Jaquell Chandler uses hypnotherapy to improve his times on the track.
I wrote a pair of stories for this Sunday's feature section in The Record on how many local athletes are turning to hypnosis in an effort to improve their times on the track and earn college scholarships.
Troy High School junior Jordan Canzeri, a standout on the track and the football field, has used hypnotherapy and Next Level Football combines to his advantage in his journey to earning an college scholarship in athletics.
I also wrote a sidebar story on how local hypnotherapist Maggie Ferrari is involved with Next Level Football, an organization that helps increase the level of promotion for high school football players looking to earn scholarships.
Shaker High track runners Matt Conti and Chris Herman talk about hypnosis at the Section II Class A track meet Thursday at Shenendehowa High School. They will run for Providence and North Carolina State, respectively. (Photos by Mike McMahon - The Record).
It is certainly a fascinating topic, yet it also has its critics.
Most local high school coaches with athletes that use hypnotherapy will not comment on the record about the issue. Some feel that it's just a bunch of mind tricks, while others would rather have their athletes simply focus on physical preparation. There is also a fine line between the positive goal-setting in the hypnotherapy sessions and an inflated sense of ego in young athletes that may have repercussions down the line.
-- What do you think? Is it safe for athletes to undergo hypnotherapy in an effort to shave seconds off their times and perhaps earn an athletic scholarship?
Is this the new wave of the future in sports? In what other ways are athletes gaining an edge on the competition beside the old standbys of more repetitions in practice and more time in the weight room?
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