Don’t be fooled by the title of this post. It’s actually about football.

White Plains High School will host 7-on-7 Passing Competition on June 13 at 1 p.m. and will feature some of the area’s top teams. Carmel, Iona Prep, White Plains, North Rockland, Stepinac, Spring Valley, Croton-Harmon, Pleasantville Irvington, Rye Neck, Clarkstown North, Haldane, and Brunswick are among the teams that have already committed.

It’s a bracket tournament with each team guaranteed three games.

Football in mid-June has a nice ring to it. I’ll actually be on vacation that week but full intend to stop by and watch for a while.

Has it really been 11 days?

It hit me today that I hadn’t checked in on the blog in a while. I was shocked when I learned it had been this long. I’ve been spending most of my time covering high school golf, which is now in the postseason, on the golf blog (yes, it’s riveting stuff). This time of year, though, is typically quiet so don’t assume I’ve lost any passion for football or hoops. I haven’t.

Some things to pass along:

– Two more local basketball players are headed to the Northeast-10 Conference. Jonathan Schofield of Hamilton will play for Southern Connecticut. Alex Judge of Croton-Harmon is headed to Pace.

Schofield missed much of last season because of suspension but is a versatile talent who’ll fit in perfectly in that league. He’s a Randy Wilson-type with his size and ability to get to the basket. As you remember, Wilson starred at Peekskill before a solid career at Pace.

Judge has the talent to be a star in that league, evidenced by his effort in the Senior All-Star Game when he nearled upstaged Sherrod Wright. Judge is a gifted shooter who really broke out this season and is only going to get better as he get stronger.

– Also in basketball, Rye Neck has apparently cut its list of candidates to replace Frank Morretti down to four. A decision should be coming soon. Obviously, Rye Neck struggled two years ago and snuck into the Class B playoffs last season. But this is a program with great potential. The football, soccer and baseball teams are good almost every single year. Why not basketball? If a coach gets in there and convinces a few more of the football and baseball players to come out — similar to the Dearwester, Spano, Spedafino team from a few years ago — this is a team that could be back in the mix. – Frenji Sports will host the 2nd annual Frankie Williams Charity Classic on Thursday, June 4 at the Theodore Young Community Center in Greenburgh. Doors open at 6:30 and game time is 7:30.

Last year’s rosters were loaded with the elite talent from tri-state area, including Lance Stephenson and Durand Scott. This year’s rosters will be star-studded, for sure. Lance will almost certainly be back and I highly recommend seeing him if you never have. I’ll try to get confirmation of names in the next few days.

Former Nets star Kenny Anderson will be a celebrity coach. Lincoln coach Tiny Morton, who’s a celebrity in local basketball I suppose, will be on the other bench.

Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for kids under 13. All proceeds go towards the development of grassroots basketball through the Frenji Sports program. It also helps us raise Health Awareness for Kidney Disease and Cancer.

– The Section 1 Recruiting Player Evaluation Day is set for Saturday at New Rochelle. Check back for more details this week. – Football teams will begin minicamps and 7 on 7s
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Otherwise, I hope everyone is having a great spring. I haven’t forgotten about doing the player profiles on the guys headed to play college football. I just want to get a few more done before I start posting them. It likely won’t be until after the state golf tournament, which is this Sunday and Monday up at Cornell.

In case you didn’t see it in today’s Journal News, Rye Neck pitcher Ryan Pennell struck out 21 batters in a no-hitter yesterday against Blind Brook. The 6-foot-3 junior got the “benefit” of needing to get four outs in two of the innings, so 21 of 23 outs he recorded in the seven-inning game were via the K.

Yes, I’m aware that this is a football and basketball blog, although Pennell is a former standout in both sports at Rye Neck (he’d probably be a Top 5 QB next season if he still played). The reason I’m mentioning this is to pose a question to the football and basketball readers: Can you remember anything quite like this in your sports?

Pennell pitched pretty much the best game you could imagine, even with the two walks. How does this stack up against the greatest single-game performances in football or basketball? Does anything quite compare in terms of dominance?

I think what Jeff Mack did to lead Iona Prep to the CHSFL championship last season — 393 yards rushing and seven touchdowns on 24 carries — was remarkable.

Figured I’d just throw that out there.

While I was away I missed a great column Rick Carpiniello wrote on former Harrison football coach Art Troilo Sr., who is being honored along with the 1973 and 1987 teams at a dinner tomorrow night at the Canyon Club. Carpiniello played on the ‘73 team.

The story highlights how Troilo remained coach of the ‘73 team despite a teachers strike three weeks into the preseason. Troilo told his assistants they should join the strike and he coached the team by himself. The team went undefeated.

Carp also explains how, if not for an injury to Troilo during his senior year at Syracuse, the Hall of Fame career of Jim Brown would have started a little later.

Harrison will be hosting a golf outing tomorrow morning and then the dinner at night.

Somers will hold its outing on Friday at Putnam National, and New Rochelle will hold its fundraiser golf event on June 22 at Split Rock. If you’re interested in attending, playing or sponsoring, click here to download the brochure and sign-up sheet.

It’s not every day you get to write these words: I just got home from Alabama.

But I can. I spent the weekend down in Birmingham attending the wedding of former Journal News writer Ian Rapoport. It was, well, different down there but we enjoyed it. Of course, it helped that Josh Thomson and I squeezed in a few rounds of golf at the famous Robert Trent Jones Trail.

While I was away I did see this story in the Providence Journal that New Rochelle’s Geoff McDermott is exploring the possibility of playing football at Boston College. As you know, McDermott was a two-sport standout at New Ro before opting to play basketball at Providence, where he started for four seasons.

The 6-foot-8 McDermott was recruited to play QB, TE or DE out of high school by schools like Rutgers, Syracuse, Wisconsin and many others. At Boston College, McDermott would likely have to be a DE or TE for the one season he’s there.

NCAA rules allow athletes to transfer schools and participate immediately if they’re switching sports. It’s the same thing former Duke point guard Greg Paulus is considering playing football at Michigan, Nebraska or Syracuse. Paulus and McDermott quarterbacked their teams to the 2005 high school state championship game, which is the best game I’ve ever witnessed.

Many have projected McDermott to take this route since high school. I was always skeptical. I know McDermott and he clearly loved basketball more than football. In fact, he considered not even playing football during his senior season to concentrate on hoops. He was talked out of it by Ray Rice and, in turn, Rice played basketball after skipping his junior season. I always believed McDermott was aggressively pursue a career in basketball in some way. Perhaps I was wrong.

We’ll see in the next few weeks. McDermott will be visiting BC soon and will meet with the coaches on his role. As the article states, he’d have to be accepted into any school as a graduate student.

The third annual Section 1 Recruiting Inc. Player Evaulation Day is scheduled for Saturday, May 30 at New Rochelle High School. It’s open to players who’ll be sophomores, juniors and seniors next season and costs $60 if you register by May 15.

The day-long combine has become one of the most important dates on the football calendar. Prospective college players get a chance to record all the pertinent numbers of recruitment — 40-yard dash, vertical leap, three-cone drill, bench press and the kneeling powerball toss. There’s a speed and strength seminar conducted by Forme Fitness, followed by a college coaches instruction by position.

Coaches from Salve Regina, Pace University, Utica College, Amherst College, Southern Connecticut State University, _Char” style=”font-weight: normal”>SUNY – Maritime, St. Anselm College, Union College, Ithaca College, and SUNY Cortland all attended last year, as well as former Section 1 and current college football players coaching the players through drills.

There will be an awards ceremony at the end and a chance for players to speak to the college coaches in attendance.

Registration is between 8 to 8:45 a.m. with the combine beginning at 9. Lunch is at noon, followed by the Forme seminar at 12:30. The position drills go from 1:30 to 3.

For the registration form, and more information, go to the Section 1 Recruiting site, which you can access here.