i graduated from st. mary's in '64. there was an assistant coach named lilac who worked for coach beale/gfhs, and also for mr. reardon during the summer supervising the playgrounds. he might be part of the lilac family you were talking about. i don't know his actual first name – to me his first name was "coach".
I just checked our SMA Class ‘64 yearbook, Peter…and our Coach Lilac’s first name was “John.”
He was asst. coach for our Kerry Blue Northern Conference football championship team in the fall of ‘63…and he was the head coach of our Junior Varsity basketball team.
ok, so i am getting old. i really don't remember coach lilac from st. mary's. i stopped being a football manager part way through the football season our senior year and didn't pay that much attention to football the rest of the season, except for remembering, for the rest of my life, that paul missed four consecutive PATs in the big game against high school in the snow at east field. coach lilac made his biggest (bigger?) impression on me from summers when i was a playground leader when i interacted with him 5 days a week, multiple times a day.
i joined a while ago, i think it was your fault. we got snow here in albuquerque yesterday. but all the rhizomes and bulbs are sending out significant leaves.
Great column. What a shame politics enters so prevelently even in high school sports. Keeping the tourney in Glens Falls should also have been a slam dunk.....
Do you not edit your own work? “Maybe he imagines major corporate sponsors contributing barrels of money in big cities like Buffalo, Syracuse and Albany to enhance the coiffures of the public high school athletic association and believes a big-city experience will enhance the tournament for the high school athletes.” I hope you actually meant to say “coffers.”
Serious question, then: would you have cut any slack to a reporter in your employ back in the day making a similar mistake and providing a similar response?
Nobody beats themselves up more over a mistake than reporters and editors. My response then was to make sure they learned from it so they did not make the same mistake twice. I then told them not to beat themselves up over it because they were human. I once did a calculation of the total number of words in the daily newspaper and found if we got 99.9 percent of them correct we would have 54 spelling errors in the newspaper and I would find that unacceptable. So we regularly were far better than 99.9 percent accuracy. Today's column was 1775 words so that one error represents .0005 percent of the total words used. Mistakes happen. It is part of life. I'lll try not to make the same mistake again.
Perhaps this heart-felt column will be read by Mr. Zayas and the committee. It could possibly turn things around for the state tournament's return to the best venue ever!!
Took your advice and visited the Chapman for Hometown Teams - enoyed it and yes picked up a book. Your article on The Tournament is spot on and was a joy to read. We will miss Pete and his love of hoops.
Hey Peter, this is Pat Lilac (current football coach at GF) that is my Dad who coached at St. Mary's. After leaving St. Mary's he went to Stillwater where he coached for 35 yrs. Although his name is John, he is called Mike.
Thanks for responding, Pat. As an SMA football/basketball cheerleader I remember your Dad as a real fine gentleman. What a great athletic legacy within your family, as well as the Girard’s. Great leadership and good sportsmanship skills taught to countless generations of young kids within our local counties of school systems. Stand proud! 🫡
thank you. once i looked up his picture in my yearbook i remembered that he was at st. mary's. the mike/john names were confusing me a bit although i did not realize it until just now. our baseball team at st. mary's played stillwater (i remember going down there once my sophomore or junior year). i have always told people when i get the chance that the battle of saratoga should have been called the battle of stillwater.
Its funny you mention that, my Dad's brother Butch who passed away this December was also a longtime coach and Town Supervisor. He tried for years to get the name changed to the Battle of Stillwater. His son is now the Stillwater hoops coach who just won state title.
the thing is saratoga springs did not exist yet when the battle was fought, and everyone, practically anyway, assumes the name of the battle comes from that town, especially since you can get off the northway there to go to the battlefield park, even though the town is nowheres near where the battle was. the town of saratoga (now schuylerville) was where burgoyne retreated (northward, away from the battle scene) and eventually surrendered, but the town had nothing to do with the battle. the american general schuyler had a home near the battle which burgoyne had torn down because it was in the way of his artillery's line of sight. he apologized at the surrender. anyway, it is nice to know that someone else agrees with me about the name of the battle!
i realized a bit ago that i had your father and brent steuerwald (sp?), a coach at gfhs, mixed up in my mind. sorry for that. i knew there was a coach lilac back then, but after a while things get mixed up, especially when so much time has passed.
It's bad enough that they took it away from Glens Falls, who did a great job hosting it for decades. What's worse is that they gave it back to Binghamton, who ran an sh** show for three years from 2017-19. In Binghamton, they couldn't even use a credit card to buy tickets at Binghamton and you could only buy tickets at the box office for the current session, not any future ones. It felt like 1960... and I'm not just talking about the bunker dark arena. No wonder the actual basketball experts overwhelmingly wanted to keep it in GF. I went to both venues as both a fan and as part of a delegation and GF was light years better from both sides of the coin. Both Zaya$ has turned the association into only being about money.
To show how little local connection the Post-Star now has to the community, the front page of today's e-edition was a half page picture of a local ice cream stand opening (as it does every year). In the past, two local teams winning state basketball championships at home would've been guaranteed front page material.
Your article on the Glens Falls being the type of place that the State championships should be held was beautifully written and an enjoyable read. We can only hope Zayak resigns or somehow decides to understand that money is not everything.
i graduated from st. mary's in '64. there was an assistant coach named lilac who worked for coach beale/gfhs, and also for mr. reardon during the summer supervising the playgrounds. he might be part of the lilac family you were talking about. i don't know his actual first name – to me his first name was "coach".
I just checked our SMA Class ‘64 yearbook, Peter…and our Coach Lilac’s first name was “John.”
He was asst. coach for our Kerry Blue Northern Conference football championship team in the fall of ‘63…and he was the head coach of our Junior Varsity basketball team.
Nice to see you join The Front Page, Peter!
ok, so i am getting old. i really don't remember coach lilac from st. mary's. i stopped being a football manager part way through the football season our senior year and didn't pay that much attention to football the rest of the season, except for remembering, for the rest of my life, that paul missed four consecutive PATs in the big game against high school in the snow at east field. coach lilac made his biggest (bigger?) impression on me from summers when i was a playground leader when i interacted with him 5 days a week, multiple times a day.
i joined a while ago, i think it was your fault. we got snow here in albuquerque yesterday. but all the rhizomes and bulbs are sending out significant leaves.
Coach Mike Lilac started his coaching career at St Mary’s before returning to Stillwater. He is the same guy you remember.
Great column. What a shame politics enters so prevelently even in high school sports. Keeping the tourney in Glens Falls should also have been a slam dunk.....
Would you have voted for trump after you heard him ?
Did you vote for him after he made it abundantly clear how he felt about women?! Or after he made fun of a disabled person?
Sorry.
He presented who he is to all of us. My moral compass said no way. Plus the fact he's an absolute idiot
I went to stand with over one million people who felt the exact same way.
Maybe Lochner had a come to Jesus moment and realized who she voted for.
I can't get past she knew who he was the first time around .
She stated to me she wanted something different! So you vote for a madman?
She may be a cut above Stefanik , that's not a high bar, but she got taken by a con man who disparaged women and cheered for white nationalism.
Do you not think that these votes are somewhat responsible for what happened on 1/6? Because I do.
Maybe someday I'll be more forgiving but look where we are.
My point is will you vote for Stefanik instead?
I am now Tonko district...hoping map doesn't change.
I will always vote against Stefanik so if I end up back in 21 I will vote against her.
I hold out hope that a good Dem or Independent comes out.
Would be difficult for me to vote for a trump supporter.
But to actually answer your question, if and when that opportunity presents itself I'll vote for anyone over her.
Good to hear.
Do you not edit your own work? “Maybe he imagines major corporate sponsors contributing barrels of money in big cities like Buffalo, Syracuse and Albany to enhance the coiffures of the public high school athletic association and believes a big-city experience will enhance the tournament for the high school athletes.” I hope you actually meant to say “coffers.”
Yes, I did mean that. And I edit and rewrite constantly. And here is a bulletin. I am human and sometimes make mistakes.
Damn you, Spellcheck! 👊
More often than not it is the auto-correct that gets me.
Serious question, then: would you have cut any slack to a reporter in your employ back in the day making a similar mistake and providing a similar response?
Nobody beats themselves up more over a mistake than reporters and editors. My response then was to make sure they learned from it so they did not make the same mistake twice. I then told them not to beat themselves up over it because they were human. I once did a calculation of the total number of words in the daily newspaper and found if we got 99.9 percent of them correct we would have 54 spelling errors in the newspaper and I would find that unacceptable. So we regularly were far better than 99.9 percent accuracy. Today's column was 1775 words so that one error represents .0005 percent of the total words used. Mistakes happen. It is part of life. I'lll try not to make the same mistake again.
Actually, I like the use of "coiffures" here…. :)
Perhaps this heart-felt column will be read by Mr. Zayas and the committee. It could possibly turn things around for the state tournament's return to the best venue ever!!
Took your advice and visited the Chapman for Hometown Teams - enoyed it and yes picked up a book. Your article on The Tournament is spot on and was a joy to read. We will miss Pete and his love of hoops.
Thanks Bill. Glad you made it to Chapman.
Hey Peter, this is Pat Lilac (current football coach at GF) that is my Dad who coached at St. Mary's. After leaving St. Mary's he went to Stillwater where he coached for 35 yrs. Although his name is John, he is called Mike.
Thanks for responding, Pat. As an SMA football/basketball cheerleader I remember your Dad as a real fine gentleman. What a great athletic legacy within your family, as well as the Girard’s. Great leadership and good sportsmanship skills taught to countless generations of young kids within our local counties of school systems. Stand proud! 🫡
thank you. once i looked up his picture in my yearbook i remembered that he was at st. mary's. the mike/john names were confusing me a bit although i did not realize it until just now. our baseball team at st. mary's played stillwater (i remember going down there once my sophomore or junior year). i have always told people when i get the chance that the battle of saratoga should have been called the battle of stillwater.
Its funny you mention that, my Dad's brother Butch who passed away this December was also a longtime coach and Town Supervisor. He tried for years to get the name changed to the Battle of Stillwater. His son is now the Stillwater hoops coach who just won state title.
the thing is saratoga springs did not exist yet when the battle was fought, and everyone, practically anyway, assumes the name of the battle comes from that town, especially since you can get off the northway there to go to the battlefield park, even though the town is nowheres near where the battle was. the town of saratoga (now schuylerville) was where burgoyne retreated (northward, away from the battle scene) and eventually surrendered, but the town had nothing to do with the battle. the american general schuyler had a home near the battle which burgoyne had torn down because it was in the way of his artillery's line of sight. he apologized at the surrender. anyway, it is nice to know that someone else agrees with me about the name of the battle!
i realized a bit ago that i had your father and brent steuerwald (sp?), a coach at gfhs, mixed up in my mind. sorry for that. i knew there was a coach lilac back then, but after a while things get mixed up, especially when so much time has passed.
Yes… Tourney should stay in GF… and bring the girls’ games up to GF as well!
It's bad enough that they took it away from Glens Falls, who did a great job hosting it for decades. What's worse is that they gave it back to Binghamton, who ran an sh** show for three years from 2017-19. In Binghamton, they couldn't even use a credit card to buy tickets at Binghamton and you could only buy tickets at the box office for the current session, not any future ones. It felt like 1960... and I'm not just talking about the bunker dark arena. No wonder the actual basketball experts overwhelmingly wanted to keep it in GF. I went to both venues as both a fan and as part of a delegation and GF was light years better from both sides of the coin. Both Zaya$ has turned the association into only being about money.
To show how little local connection the Post-Star now has to the community, the front page of today's e-edition was a half page picture of a local ice cream stand opening (as it does every year). In the past, two local teams winning state basketball championships at home would've been guaranteed front page material.
Ken,
Your article on the Glens Falls being the type of place that the State championships should be held was beautifully written and an enjoyable read. We can only hope Zayak resigns or somehow decides to understand that money is not everything.
It would be nice to see, but I am not hopeful. The damage has already been done.