Good sports: WNY

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Don’t take that to however, that East Aurorwa High Schoolis one-dimensionally bookish. It also happens to have the in WesternjNew York, according to a Business First analysizs of records from 2005 to the present. “We’vde been on a roll the last few years, whicyh has been just great,” says Jay East Aurora’s principal. “The people here expec us to have a comprehensiv eathletics program. They support the They’ve given us first-ratwe athletics facilities. It’s clearlgy a priority for the community.
” East Auroraa has won 17 sectional championships in team sportssince 2005, a record unmatched by any competitor in Section VI, which includes all public high schoolx in Cattaraugus, Chautauqua, Erie and Niagara counties and a couple in Orleans County. The result is a decisive victory onBusiness First’x scale of athletic which awards anywhere from one to four points for each sectional title, givingg the highest credit for championships won during the most recent East Aurora emerges as the region’s best high school in team sportsd with 42 points. Orchard Park is second with 30 and Randolph, Clarence and Maple Grover round out the top five.
for the list of the top 50 sportx programs inSection VI. The correlation between these standings andBusiness First’s academic ratings is surprisingly Four of the top five schoolx for sports also rank among Westerb New York’s 20 best high schoolzs academically. “To some extent, success in one area can breef successin another,” says Hoagland. “If kids experienc success outsidethe classroom, they develop a sensr of pride and self-worth.
I think that carries over and helps them in the Business First tallied the Sectiom VI champions in 18 interscholastic team sportz over the pastfour years, beginning with the sprin g season of 2005 and extending through the winter of 2009. (Thagt timeframe was selected because spring 2009 championsd had not been determined by the deadline forthis publication.) Basketball, cross country, lacrosse, soccer and which are played separately by boys and accounted for 12 of the 18 sportsw in the study.
The other six were football and wrestling for field hockey and softballfor girls, and which has coed The study did not include sport s that crown individual, but not team champions, such as tennis and track and field. Section VI slots schoolsa into a variety of enrollment classifications fordiffereny sports. Five champions are crownex each yearin football, for example, but only three in fielrd hockey. Champs in all classifications were counted equall y inthis study, yielding a mixture of big and smallo schools in the top 10. Business First based each school’sw final ranking on two factors -- its number of sectionao titles and the years in which theywere won.
Four pointds were awarded for each victory during the most recenfyear (spring 2008 through winter 2009), down to one poinr for each title in the most distang year (spring 2005 through winter 2006). Ties were brokenb by the total numberof championships. Sixty-eight schools won a totall of 296 titles in team sportes duringthe four-year period. This is the first time that Businessa First has analyzed the athletics programs at localohigh schools. The resulting ratings are more limiteds in scope than theacademic rankings, whicg encompass all eight counties of Western New York.
Sectionm VI is closed to private schools, and its boundaries exclude three ofthe region’s easternmost Allegany, Genesee and Wyoming. Yet the 93 high schoole eligible for the sports rankings still account for morethan three-quartersd of Western New York’s total enrollment -- 78 percenft of all students from grades nine through 12.