Unfortunately, the physical setup at Bucknell does not enable me to do the live chat format that I use for other sports like football, wrestling and basketball. That’s because I cannot take my laptop onto the pool deck and, no, I don’t have a Blackberry or iPhone or any of those other whiz-bang, hand-held gizmos.

I’m an old man. What can I say?

But it is just a few steps from the pool to the media room, so updates of the finals will occur rapidly with notes and commentary.

For live results, go to piaa.org here or paswimming.com here.

Here are the finals for Thursday, March 17 (refresh frequently for updates):

CLASS AA GIRLS

100 freestyle: Sarah Hitchens wins Villa Maria’s first individual gold medal with a narrow win over Adrianna Grabski, a freshman from Mifflinburg. Hitchens touches the wall in 51.45; Grabski in 51.66.

500 freestyle: Kutztown freshman Ryan Gillian wins her second gold medal and secures swimmer of the meet honors with a strong 4:44.29 in the 500.

100 backstroke: The best race of the night, but Mercyhurst Prep backstroke star Marie Georger pulls through again, beating Mars’ Margaret Huber by .12 of a second. Georger wins her third backstroke title with a time of 55.34, just beating Huber’s 55.46 and denying Huber a third career gold medal.  Georger is a junior and has opportunity next year to become the first Class AA girls’ swimmer to win four backstroke titles.

100 breaststroke: No one is in sight when Madison Burns of Northwestern Lehigh breezes to her second win of the meet with a swim of 1:03.72, nearly three seconds ahead of the field.

400 free relay: Villa Maria Academy clinches its first team championship with a run of 3:32.30 in the relay. Hitchens wins her third gold of the meet, and is joined by Molly O’Brien, Julia Wisler and Julia Murphy.

Team champion: Villa Maria Academy with 178.5 points. West Allegheny is second at 159.  Central Columbia, which had a slight lead entering the 400 free relay, was third at 145; the Blue Jays did have a team in the final event.

CLASS AA BOYS

1-meter diving: Danniel Roberts wins Fairview’s first ever gold medal in swimming and diving with a total of 479.45.

100 freestyle: It’s gold medal No. 2 for Daniel Gosek of Holy Ghost Prep, who is unchallenged in the finals with 45.38. Gosek set state record in 50 freestyle (20.57) on Wednesday.

500 freestyle: David Paulk of Shady Side Academy picks up gold medal No. 3 by easily winning teh 500 in 4:29.41.  Runner-up Jared Haley of Northern York is 4.3 seconds behind.

100 backstroke: Annville-Cleona picks up its first PIAA swimming gold medal when senior Travis Bohn wins the backstroke in 50.99.

100 breaststroke: Bloomsburg senior  Zach Stephens makes sure everyone knows that he owns the breaststroke.  Already the PIAA record holder in the event entering Thursday at 56.43, Stephens breaks his own record twice.  He goes 55.85 in the preliminaries, then knocks down a 55.64 in the finals.  That’s enough to make him swimmer of the meet.

400 free relay: Shady Side Academy completes its run to the team title with a flourish, outlasting Springfield Twp. with a 3:11.91 to Springfield’s 3:12.20. David Paulk wins his fourth gold medal of the meet while leadoff Broderick Kelley picks up his third. Peter Scott and Ryan Koul complete the team.

Team champion: Shady Side Academy, 190 points. Fairview is second at 163.

Unfortunately, the physical setup at Bucknell does not enable me to do the live chat format that I use for other sports like football, wrestling and basketball. That’s because I cannot take my laptop onto the pool deck and, no, I don’t have a Blackberry or iPhone or any of those other whiz-bang, hand-held gizmos.

I’m an old man. What can I say?

But it is just a few steps from the pool to the media room, so updates of the finals will occur rapidly with notes and commentary.

For live results, go to piaa.org here or paswimming.com here.

Here are the finals for Wednesday, March 16 (refresh frequently for updates:

WEDNESDAY’S FINALS
CLASS AA GIRLS
1-meter diving:  Ashley Buchter of Camp Hill Trinity became the first person not named Sarah Haupt to win a PIAA swimming and diving title when she outlasted Upper Moreland’s Natalee Szopo, scoring a 448.70 to Szopo’s 442.35.  Buchter’s score of 448.70 is the third-best in AA girls since Lisa Silvestri of Lower Moreland posted her state-record 480.65.

200 medley relay: Central Columbia wins its first PIAA swimming relay with a 1:47.71 in the 200 medley relay.  The Blue Jays are all underclassmen: freshman Kelsey Chyko, junior Dani Blass, freshman Beth Grazio and sophomore Katie Saloky.  The title is Central Columbia’s 8th PIAA swimming title.

200 freestyle: Kutztown freshman Gillian Ryan came into the finals with the second-best time behind Camp Hill Trinity’s Caroline Finkbeiner, but puts down a strong 1:47.80 to beat Finkbeiner and win Kutztown’s first PIAA swimming championship; Kutrztown does not have a formal swim team.  Ryan’s time is just .43 off the PIAA record of 1:47.37 set by Bloomsburg great Stef Williams in 1998.

200 individual medley: Madison Burns of Northwestern Lehigh beats Mercyhurst Prep’s ouitstanding Marie Georger to win the 200 IM in 2:00.48.  That breaks  the PIAA Class AA mark of 2:00.51 set in 2009 by Breanna Folk of Schuylkill Valley.  Burns is Northwestern Lehigh’s first PIAA swimming champion.

50 freestyle: Saloky picks up her second gold medal of the meet, beating Mifflkinburg freshman Adrianna Grabski to the wall in 23.45; Grabski finished in 23.59.

100 butterfly: Margaret Gruber doesn’t have to share her gold medal this year. Gruber swam a 54.98 to claim the 2011 100 fly outright after finishing in a dead heat last year with Victoria Gillespie of Nazareth Academy.  Gruber’s title is the second for Mars.

200 free relay: Villa Maria Academy of District 1 keeps Central Columbia from a first-day relay sweep, going 1:37,24 to Central Columbia’s 11:37.90.  Sarah Hitchens, kaitlin Alvanos, Julia Murphy and Julia Wisler comprised the Villa team, which won its first PIAA swimming championship.

CLASS AA BOYS
200 medley relay: Shady Side Academy, gunning for the AA team title, gets off to a god start by claiming the medley relay in 1:36.83.  David Paulk, Grant Zentgraf, Broderick Kelley, and Chris Leech beat Franklin (1:37.28)

200 freestyle: Paulk does his Iron Man thing, coming right back from the relay to crush the field in the 200 free.  The Princeton-bound Paulk finishes in 1:38.53, more than three full seconds ahead of runner-up Jared Haley of Northern York (1:41.56).

200 individual medley: Bloomsburg’s Zach Stephens swims his personal best, a 1:51.12 to claim his second PIAA swimming gold; Stephens won last year’s Class AA 100 breaststroke. Stephens grinned slightly when asked if he saw that Hershey and national record holder in 200 IM, David Nolan, went to AAA.  But he said, “You want to be in the pool with a guy like that.  I will only make you better.”  Bravo.

50 freestyle: New state record for Daniel Gosek of Holy Ghost Prep who shaves. 12 off the old mark of 20.69 by touching the wall ina speedy 20.57.  That broke the mark set in 2009 by York Suburban’s Kevin Marsteller.  That’s a pretty auspicious way for Holy Ghost to claim its first PIAA swimming medal.

100 butterfly:Broderick Kelley of Shady Side Academy joins Paulk in the double-gold club, going 49.93 to win the fly.  He easily wins the event; West Allegheny’s Tim mangis was second at 51.98.

200 free relay:Springfield Township out of District 1 beats Fairview to the line.  Chris McTear, Bill Riley, Ryan McWilliams and Jake Oeschger win the school’s third 200 FR since 2007.

First, information on the PIAA Swimming and Diving Championships can be found here.

Next, the link to paswimming.com, a superb swimming and diving resource can be found here.

District 1
Boys AAA
Boys AA
Girls AAA
Girls AA

District 2
Boys AAA
Boys AA
Girls AAA
Girls AA

District 3
All classes

District 4
All classes

District 6 / 9
Boys AAA
Boys AA
Girls AAA
Girls AA

District 7
Boys and Girls AAA
Boys and Girls AA

District 8
Boys AAA
Boys AA
Girls AAA
Girls AA

District 10
Boys AAA
Boys AA
Girls AAA
Girls AA

District 11
Boys AAA
Boys AA
Girls AAA
Girls AA

District 12
Boys AAA
Boys AA
Girls AAA
Girls AA

The new school, a merger of Indian Valley and Lewistown high schools that was approved by the Mifflin County School Board last week, will be in place next school year if current Mifflin County School District plans move forward. At current, there is no indication that anything will interrupt those plans, but with school mergers, anything can happen.

But here is what has happened: Indian Valley and Lewistown, both members of the Mountain League, were booted out of the Mountain League in 2012-2013, although the new school will have Mountain League schedules in most, if not all, sports for the next school year.

With the new school, which will be a mid-sized Class AAAA school in football and basketball, thrown out of the Mountain League, it is highly likely that the Mid-Penn Conference will accept the new school as a full member at the start of the next cycle.

On Thursday, the Mid-Penn Conference, as anticipated, accepted State College as an all-sports member; the Little Lions had been a football-only member since 2004. With Mifflin County between State College and Harrisburg, it makes adding Mifflin County a little more palatable to the Mid-Penn.

So palatable, in fact, the conference has included the Mifflin County school in its 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 schedules as a league member, despite the fact that no formal action has been taken on the Mifflin County matter.

In fact, the Mid-Penn, meeting at the same time as the Mountain League and unaware of the ML’s actions, would likely have passed the alignments that included Mifflin County had it not been for requests by Trinity and Steelton-Highspire to change basketball divisions. The conference will vote electronically next Wednesday on the alignments once Steel-High and Trinity resolve the issue. Assuming the Mifflin County school is included in those alignments, as they were on Wednesday, that’s a pretty good indication Mifflin County will have smooth sailing to Mid-Penn membership.

Sometimes I just provide links.

Sometimes I make people mad with my rankings or opinions.

Sometimes I even have someone agree with me.

But always, always, I wish the very best for everyone – athlete or not, coach or not, parent or not – because to think anything less would make me less than I can and should be.

I thank everyone for their patronage of RodFrisco.com this year. But far more than that, I wish everyone – Christian or otherwise – a very happy, safe and wonderful Christmas and holiday season.

Merry Christmas to all.

Fairly light menu, to be honest. The biggest news of the meeting occurred on Thursday night when the Board passed, on a first-reading basis, a proposal to advance the start of fall sports practice and playing dates by one week from the current PIAA calendar. The measure, if eventually passed in full by the Board of Directors, would be implemented for the 2012-2013 school year.

First, let’s make one thing clear: The proposal has not become PIAA policy yet. The measure must pass a second reading in January by a majority vote and by a two-thirds majority vote in March if it makes it that far. Thursday’s vote was 18-13, which shows the measure has support, but not the kind of overwhelming support required to implement the change. Frankly, it’s an uphill fight for the proposal; it will take 21 affirmative votes to pass the proposal.

A quick look at the financial game reports for fall sports shows that PIAA gate receipts are well behind last year’s fall sports receipts. Compared to last year’s receipts, PIAA is more than $23,000 behind last year’s total (football is not included in that number).

Updates will appear below the bar. The most recent update is at the top

—-
As expected, not much going on. The Board is down to a discussion stage on a number of matters that will not require Board action. I’m off to Hersheypark Stadium. Frisky out.

Lots of discussion on an important by-law: How the PIAA will count enrollment toward cooperative sponsorships. The PIAA is proposing to count 50 percent of a sending school’s enrollment toward a co-op rather than the current 100 percent. This seems like a reasonable and a good step toward alleviating the problem of bumping a host school up in classification.

Some Board members are bartering for an even greater reduction in percentage – District 5 rep Virgil Palumbo is asking for 25 percent – in orderto bring the percentage more in line with the actual number of students to go from a sending school to a host school.

There is a counter-argument that such a move would give a competitive advantage to the small number of schools that can engage in co-ops. And the proposal is tabled.

District 5 rep Virgil Palumbo makes a new proposal to lower the percent of enrollment used in a co-op to 25 percent. The measure passes on a first-reading basis, 22-7. The original proposal remains on the table.
Back in regular session.

Just finishing up a hearing for a Danville athlete. Will return to regular session shortly.

I spent the day refining and then actually giving a presentation to the District 3 Committee for a position with the district as its webmaster and director of corporate sponsorships.

I’m pleased to announce that the district, after some healthy discussion on the matter, has approved the job. I thank the committee, and especially chairman Sam Elias of Hershey and vice-chairman Ron Kennedy of Donegal, with deep gratitude.

In brief, I have been charged with upgrading the District 3 site and providing the site with daily content as well as establishing permanent features. In addition, District 3, much like District 7, is actively seeking corporate sponsorships for its championship events. I am thrilled to be the point man for this initiative. The district will be seeking everything from major sponsors (a la District 7) to low-cost sponsorships for specific sports.

I will have details soon on the new District 3 website, which I hope to have up by Christmas. In the meantime, if you are interested in sponsoring District 3 championships at any level or know of an individual or business that is interested in the same, please feel free to contact me at rod@rodfrisco.com or call me at 717-919-5144. I will be happy to explain District 3′s different levels of sponsorship that are designed to work with any budget.

Now, what does this mean for RodFrisco.com? Is this the end of the site? Hardly.

What will happen with RodFrisco.com is a shift in philosophy, but not in content. I’ll be less of a reporter / blogger (because of time), but still very heavy on daily information. I will have to streamline my time and some of the information. I’ll have shorter, to-the-point blog posts and more links directly to the information.

I still intend to cover PIAA championships andpost everything I can related to PIAA news. For example, I’ll cover Friday morning’s PIAA Board of Directors meeting as well as all four football championship games this weekend.

But are some things that will necessarily change. For instance, I know some readers are looking for District 3 wrestling rankings on the site, but unfortunately, I cannot so them for two reasons. Now that I am actively working for District 3, I do not believe it is ethical for me to post district rankings, which are an opinion. It could be construed as the official position of District 3, and that cannot ever be the case. In addition, I am doing the team wrestling power ratings, which will formally qualify and seed the District 3 team Championships. I cannot be in the position of putting up my own rankings while working the official ratings; it’s a conflict of interest, and neither District 3 nor I can be in that position.

So I have to back away from my own rankings, but I’ll be happy to post the rankings of others. As such, things will change a little, but not in a way that’s detrimental to the readers of RodFrisco.com, readers for which I am extremely grateful.

Thanks to all who have chosen RodFrisco.com since the site launched in February. The site isn’t going away. In fact, it will have a sharper focus as a result of my work with District 3.

Keep checking. There will be plenty of items on the site in the coming days, weeks and months.

Rod

From bill on Contact us #

Rod, Wonderful effort—-a grand display by you to keeping good things going. Can we send a donation or tribute? …

Well, first of all, many thanks to the otherwise anonymous Bill. Comments like that help keep my enthusiasm level high.

But Bill did bring up that rather sensitive subject of money. This gives me an opportunity to make a little pre-emptive announcement.

As a dot com, I cannot accept donations toward the site. I run a (very) small business, subject to the laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and those fine folks at the Internal Revenue Service. So any income I derive through the website must come in the form of either sales or sponsorships.

I am on the cusp of seeking both. Soon – very soon – I will have some RodFrisco.com gear available for sale. No, you won’t have a slick, four-color brochure to peruse. I will have just one product to start: Simple, white T-shirts with the red-and-black RodFrisco.com logo across the front.

I will make those shirts available for sale via the website in a week or so; I still have to set up my PayPal account and install it on my site.

If you like the site, please consider purchasing one as a way of supporting the site. They will be sold a small profit, the monies of which will be used to support the site.

I do not plan on making RodFrisco.com a subscription site … ever. That’s not a great business decision, to be honest, but I have always believed that the information on the site should not be for sale. I just want readers throughout the state and beyond to have a vault of information that they can access 24/7 without the annoyance of logging in or even paying a small fee for the privilege.

The simple fact is I love covering and commenting on Pennsylvania high school sports and have since I wandered into The Progress of Clearfield 37 years ago looking for a job answering phones (thanks, Fred Kavelak!). It’s a passion, and passion doesn’t have a price.

The T-shirts will, though. But it will be a reasonable one. Look for the announcement soon.

And thanks to all who have viewed the site (just about 400,000 and growing since February).

You can join the chat tomorrow here at 7 p.m. And yes, you can make fun of my rankings. A little bit.

Just a reminder: I’ve written and posted precious little on anything but football this fall, but I will begin posting post-season information of district and PIAA fall championships ASAP. As I’ve said since the site launched in February, that’s my primary mission.

Erie Times-News lead scholastic writer Tom Reisenweber, a rising star among the state’s high school writers, authored all three with an assist from columnist John Dudley, who formerly covered high school wrestling for the Times-News. John still does the occasional football game or wrestling match for the paper.

The stories are here, here and here.

The series is not just crafted well, it does an excellent job of opening a window on how PIAA districts operate. There are substantial similarities and differences in the operations of the 12 districts, but once you read through the series, you will have a pretty good idea how districts do their business across the state.

I’ll let the details speak for themselves, but I do want to comment on one important aspect of the stories: Tom and John did an excellent job of skewering the notion that districts are not oligarchies, as they seem to be so often portrayed. That simply is not the case, and the Erie stories do a nice job of exploding that and some other myths. I doubt that was the Times-News’ intent. Rather, that’s what happens when reporters are committed to fairness.

In the last few months, I’ve become more intimate with the operation of District 3, now that I am a paid independent contractor facilitating the field hockey and girls volleyball power ratings. I did not regularly cover District 3 meetings (out of sheer sloth, if I can be so honest) while I was at The Patriot-News, but I can tell you this. The District 3 Committee is dedicated to doing the right thing for interscholastic athletics in District 3.

That occasionally results in disagreement and debate, but it should be comforting that District 3 (as well as other PIAA districts) are not monochromatic either in their outlook or their make-up. I’ve been called an apologist and even a shill for PIAA (and to a much lesser degree its districts) many times over the years. That’s never bothered me because I found out years ago that PIAA is not the smoky, back-room poker game in which it has been so improperly characterized.

This series is worth your time no matter what section of the state you reside.