The New York State Sportswriters Association has named three Skaneateles varsity football players to the 2011 Class C All-State team.
Quarterback Troy Green and Offensive End Koree Reed were named to first team offense, and Offensive End Jake Cooney was named to second team offense.
This is the only all-state team to include Skaneateles players in NYSSA records, which go back to 2004 and are posted on RoadtoSyracuse.com.
“We’re very proud of our athletes and what they were able to do both on and off the field this year, and we like to see when it pays off with this kind of recognition,” said Stacey Tice, athletic director for the Skaneateles school district.
“They had a great year,” said interim football head coach Joe Sindoni, who served as assistant coach during the football season. “Troy had a great year — the numbers speak for themselves; Koree has a lot of explosiveness; Jake just does everything right. I’m glad to see he got some recognition.”
Sindoni said he also expected that defensemen Conor Herr and Maliek Merrit would be named all-state, since they both had exceptional seasons, and was disappointed they were not.
“Conor especially, he had nearly double the number of tackles as the next guy on the team. I think he had to have been close” to making all-state, Sindoni said.
The recent all-state announcements were only the latest in a long string of awards and honors for members of the Lakers varsity football team, which went 9-0 this season. Sixteen players were named all-league; Troy Green was named all-Central New York team quarterback by The Post Standard and player of the year by the Auburn Citizen. Also named as “all stars” in the Citizen were Koree Reed, Luke Dransak, Conor Herr and Jake Cooney, with Maliek Merrit and Ryan Sherman named as honorable mentions.
The Lakers’ undefeated 2011 season is about more than awards however, Sindoni said. It will also benefit the players going to college in 2012.
At the end of the 2010-11 school year, then-head coach Tim Green and assistant coach Sindoni called colleges to talk about players interested in their schools. This year, 16 colleges came to Skaneateles to look at recruiting Skaneateles players, Sindoni said.
“There was a period this year where I got calls twice a day every day for a two-week period. We could have as many as 10 kids play college ball, including Division 1 schools. That’s the best part to me,” Sindoni said, adding that some players could get into schools that otherwise they could not because their grades are not high enough.
“That’s the benefit of the success we’ve had — they can use it to do something tangible,” he said.
Jason Emerson is editor of the Skaneateles Press. He can be reached at [email protected].
