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Since it's award season anyway, it only figures that, in the last days of January and first of February, there would be titles handed out in various winter sports.

All of it started Monday with the CNYCY and OHSL girls indoor track championships at SRC Arena. Both in that event, and in the girls event two nights later, C-NS, F-M,and J-D took home boys and girls championships, with the only fluctuation in the OHSL Liberty/National events, where Cazenovia's girls and Tully's boys emerged with titles.

Then, on Saturday, they handed out the Section III class team titles in wrestling. By tiny margins, Baldwinsville edged Liverpool in the Class AA meet at C-NS and Canastota, by 1.5 points over General Brown, snared the top honors in Class C at Sherburne-Earlville. By contrast, Phoenix rolled to first place in Class B at Cazenovia, and Sandy Creek earned the Class D championship on its home mats. Fulton fended off Indian River and earned the Class A prize.

Up north, they're deep into Frontier League tournaments on the basketball side, and volleyball titles are already handed out. In the latter, Carthage needed five sets to edge Watertown in the A final, with Lowville sweeping South Jefferson in the B final and Beaver River doing the same to South Lewis and, in earning the C/D championship, staying undefeated.

A day later, when the Section III playoff pairings were announced, Beaver River had the top seed in Class C-2, with Tully in the same spot in C-1. Homer, despite seeing its 33-match win streak ended by CBA back on Monday, is the top seed in Class B (and could meet the Brothers again in the semifinals).

Whitesboro starts as Class A's top seed, just ahead of Oneida, and Cincinnatus occupies the no. 1 seed in the Class D tournament. Playoff matches get started early this week, with quarterfinals on Thursday, semifinals early next week and the finals on Feb. 18 at Jamesville-DeWitt, starting at 10 a.m. with C-2, followed by C-1, D, A and B, in that order.

On the hockey side, Clinton's stunning rally to beat Skaneateles last Wednesday may have handed the Division II regular-season crown to Oswego. Just as important, it inched the Warriors closer to the playoffs, though a win over New Hartford Wednesday is still needed to ice things.

Never mind that the girls from Skaneateles took a painful shoot-out defeat to Alex Bay in Wednesday's playoffs. Alex Bay will meet Oswego in the finals after the Bucs upended top seed Ithaca.

Up in Division I boys hockey, two losses by Baldwinsville makes the last regular-season game against Solvay at Allyn Arena, essentially, a play-in contest to join West Genesee, Corcoran and F-M as the West representatives. Central Square could get to second place in Division I East, quite a progression for a program that was getting run over every night just a couple of seasons ago.

Oh, and not much happened in hoops. Just another coach cast aside by a school (Phil Reed, the fine girls coach at Oswego), another injury to J-E's Molly Hourigan that, thankfully, doesn't appear too serious, and J-D, Westhill, South Jefferson and Weedsport careening toward undefeated regular seasons. And that's just the female end of it.

The male end sees Utica Proctor and Henninger moving toward Class AA's top seeds (again), J-D getting a tough win over Cortland (again), and New York Mills seriously tested in back-to-back games, but getting past Oriskany and Rome Catholic to keep on the heels of Sackets Harbor.

Then there's the Class C situation. One night, ITC is winning at Syracuse Academy of Science. The next, it's losing at Port Byron - huh? Maybe Cooperstown is the only consistent side there, bashing everyone in sight and moving toward a top seed, too.

We have just one week left in the basketball regular season, with not a whole lot to really decide, although that boys showdown Tuesday night between Bishop Grimes and Bishop Ludden sure will be fun, as will the latest CBA/J-D basketball gathering Friday night. Seven days from now, we'll have playoff brackets to go over. Lots of them.