Share: 

Friends through football share 40 years of memories

August 18, 2017

Collick and Cuzzie - On Aug. 17, I snapped a photo of Bill Collick and Vaughn Trammel on the football practice field. I told them to go get coach Gilbert Maull - he was busy running a drill. I told them the magic number was 42; that was how far we four went back, to the fall of 1975. Collick and I were football coaches on a team that included Vaughn and Gilbert. Vaughn smiled and said, ”Today is my birthday, and I’m 60 years old.” Collick is 65. Then they both laughed and Vaughn said, “How old are you getting to be?” And I answered, “Old enough to have coached somebody’s grandfather.”  

Young and experienced - Cape assistant football coach Bradley Ellingsworth graduated from Sussex Tech in 2010 and last May graduated from Wilmington University with a teaching degree and certification to teach math. He was hired to teach sixth-grade math at Mariner Middle School and was happy to rejoin coach Collick on the football field. “He was offensive coordinator at Laurel the last few seasons and coached there while he worked on his degree,” Collick said. “We are real lucky to get him. He is just solid.”

Love Train - “All the world join in for the love train.” The sounds of Philly are coming to Love Creek Elementary School as recent Temple graduate Kaitlin Kresse has been hired as the new and first music teacher at the school. Kaitlin is also working with the drum line for the high school band, whose total numbers are close to 100, encompassing the drum line and wind instruments, color guard and dancers. The Cape band will put on a lively halftime show this fall, and, as far as I know, they will not play “The Horse” by Cliff Nobles, who is from Norristown, and they won’t take the crowd through Dante’s nine concentric circles of torment, which takes three hot dogs and a cinnamon twist just to survive the depression.

Killer Bs - Sophomore Olivia Brozefsky and junior Greg Boyce return this fall as All-Conference cross country runners for Cape. Olivia owns a PR of 19:52, while Boyce’s best is 16:44. Both runners were happy to see Cape's largest turnout in years for cross country. Olivia runs all three seasons, but doesn’t put in heavy milage in the summer. Boyce, who started as a left-handed attackman on the lacrosse team, also goes easy on the miles in the summertime. “Cross country is just fun,” Boyce said. “The more people on the team, the more fun it is.”

Young bloods - Cape soccer has infused some new young coaches into the program to work alongside experienced coaches Patrick Kilby and Gary Montalto. Marisa Atkins, an Indian River grad who played for Steve Kilby then played at Washington College, works at Cape Henlopen State Park Nature Center. Joe Rupar is a teacher at Love Creek Elementary. Joe played on a state championship Sallies team his senior year; he is married to Leigh Kaminski Rupar, a teacher and Cape assistant lacrosse coach. Ariel Espinoza, Cape's head JV coach, is a 2010 graduate of Sussex Tech and a native of Honduras. Ariel has been working with the Henlopen Soccer Club the last six years.

The rich get cut - Cape soccer and volleyball enjoyed record turnouts, but the bad news is you can’t keep everybody. And so players don’t actually get cut, they simply don’t make the team. Some kids just roll with it and go do something else, while other families take it personally and go on a counterattack. Coaches hate to have to cut players; I do know that. And then there’s the phenomenon of the talented athletes who decide not to come out; maybe they’ve had it up to the eyeballs with soccer, a game that started at their feet, or don’t want to get knocked around on the football field and jeopardize their lacrosse game. Who knows, but running the hamster wheel to happiness is not the habitrail some athletes choose to follow. But if all else fails, there’s always academics to fall back on. 

Snippets - Cape workhorse fullback Kevin Wright showed up in a boot for the first practice. He needs an MRI or to simply take the boot off. We’ll see what happens. Cape is moving Zach Dale to quarterback. The experiment will be on display Saturday afternoon as Cape hosts Seaford and McKean in a scrimmage. The Vikings have wideouts Jack Dennis (6-foot-5) and Ben Weathersby (6-foot-3), and those cats need to touch the football. Kyle McCoy, a Cape 2011 quarterback/safety, has joined the Cape football staff and will coach the freshman team. Beacon has so many girls sign up for volleyball they are having tryouts alphabetically. Now that is a new one on me. Go on now, git!

Subscribe to the CapeGazette.com Daily Newsletter