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Dr. Dave Robinson walks 15 feet and that is big news

March 17, 2017

Tracks of my happy tears - Down at Elite Physical Therapy on the Boardwalk, Dr. Dave Robinson is working his way back from a spinal neck injury. Dave is working with physical therapist Alieda Lynch (who married Jose Galvez who changed his name to Torres, so now Alieda Torres) and John KnarrAlieda is an extroverted, way-out positive person who basically kicks Dave's butt in therapy workouts, according to the doctor himself. Two days ago at the end of a session, she said to him, "and now you walk." Dave stood up, grabbed the walker in front with wheelchair in back and guides in each side. His wife Linda, a major champion in this rehab journey, stood 15 feet away. Dave shuffled off to Buffalo - in plain words, walked - to Linda, who gave him a kiss upon arrival. Elite PT on the Boardwalk, with a view of the ocean, was frozen in the sands of time. If you don’t cry, you ain’t no real guy! Dave reminds me of my old dog Ruby, who had a stroke, and the traveling vet Dr. Gallery said, “Ruby will recover, and do you know why? Because she doesn’t know she’s not supposed to.” Dave said from his first conscious moment waking up with total body paralysis, “I will walk again.” Old dogs don’t play. They’re too smart to fetch, but you just can’t keep them down.

Stupid cold - Just astronomically brutal weather for spring practices, rendering baseball and softball virtually impossible to play. All the athletes’ energies are spent shivering to generate heat and there is no focus, which is dangerous when balls are flying through the air. I can’t even imagine how coaches maintain a thought process without blabbering incoherently like an official did during the lax play day scrimmage, causing two teenaged girls to look at him and say, “What?” It reminded me that the Little Big House should have stayed up as an alternative gym for bad-weather practices, just a big old barn you cannot hurt. But that opportunity is gone like a failed referendum for a swimming pool.

Talent pool - Sixty-eight teams with deep rosters are playing in the single-elimination NCAA basketball tournament. Where do all these tall people come from, and where did they learn to play the game? Not outside on playgrounds, because that culture is mostly gone. Today, it’s organized AAU, which is good and bad, like everything else. The end game is elusive, as less than 2 percent of high school players make it onto a Division I roster and less than 2 percent of them make it to the NBA. So what happens to everyone else? We hope that basketball is a means to a college degree. The graduation rate after six years for D1 basketball players is published by NCAA.org and is between 75 and 80 percent, which seems like an exaggeration to me. Honestly, the numbers are all over the place, and therefore the statistics are not to be believed.

Snippets - Cody Dmiterchik, a junior catching and batting second for the Wesley Wolverines baseball team, hit his first collegiate home run March 12 in a loss to Frostburg State. Wesley is 9-3 overall and next plays at Salisbury Friday, March 17, at 2:30 p.m. Blake Mann had seven goals and an assist as Bridgewater College lacrosse defeated Greensboro College 16-6. Blake now has more than 100 points in his career. Blake is a junior from Milton and Cape Henlopen. Anna Frederick scored twice as Temple lacrosse defeated Bucknell 11-7 March 12. Taylor Gooch played prime-time minutes on defense. The Owls are at Denver Sunday, March 19. The Wesley College softball team is 10-2. There are three players from Polytech on the team - Samantha Burns, Megan DiRubbio and Lily Engel - and Lindsay Siok from Milford. The World Baseball Classic is good television. If I knew when and where the games were telecast, I might watch one, but right now it’s all about basketball. I interviewed three Cape soccer girls March 15 and they were all enthusiastic with high expectations and are happy with coach Patrick Kilby, but all without being prompted mentioned how much they loved coach Jay Ashby. When I told them the Ashby boys, Jay and Chris, were the terrors of Cape summer soccer, earning more cards than a Hallmark store, they all laughed in disbelief. Rehoboth's YMCA U-10 team won the Delaware 24th annual All-Star U-10 Championship last week going undefeated against all Y U-10 teams in the state. Members of that team are coaches Mike Poulis and Jamie Truitt and players Miles Godwin, Colin Poulis, Allen Zhang, Jasce Truitt, Max Meadows, Andrew Ward and Jameson Tingle. My granddaughter Anna played in a Y championship game in Rehoboth when she was 10. I skipped it and when people asked me, “Y skip the Y?” I said, “I didn’t want to put myself in a position to hope other 10-year-olds miss layups.” Talk about March Madness. Go on now, git!

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