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SPORTS TALK -- LETTERS

Missing Angela

        In 1984, more than 200 women played for the Scholastic or Open Womens' soccer teams from the six regions represented in the Empire State Games.
      In 1995, only one of those women remained on an Empire State Games roster: my daughter, Angela Y. Coniglio, who won a silver medal with Western's Scholastic team in 1984, and a bronze with the Central Open team in 1995.
      If not for her untimely death at age 30 in April, I know she would have been out there in this year's Games, still striving for the gold.
        Sports pages are usually filled with stories on the "glamour" sports; pro football, hockey, basketball, and baseball; and womens' sports,  for whatever the reason, sometimes get short shrift.
      But like other athletes, soccer players (women as well as men) sweat, ache, and strain to push their bodies to the limit of excellence. My daughter did, and for a dozen years, opposing players from Long Island to Adirondack knew that they had better "mark No. 9".
      We missed Angela at this year's Games, and we'll miss her for all the Games to come. But our sorrow is softened by our pride in the knowledge that for most of her too brief life, she was one of the best athletes in the State of New York.

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         On August 4, 1996, two of the teams that Angela had played for competed in the Womens' Open Soccer gold medal game. Before the game, Leanna House of the Central team, speaking for her team-mates and for her opponents, dedicated the game to Angela. Both of Angela's teams medalled: Central won the Silver, and Western took the Gold.