Fade into your own parade after Sunday race in Milton
Selective listening - Sometimes, but not most times, I’m asked to speak to sports teams before the start of the season about how athletes should handle themselves if interviewed by the media after a game and that includes after a loss. “Stand straight, look the person in the face and speak in complete sentences” is a good place to start. And if the reporter doesn’t give his or her name, then don’t talk to them. And don’t waste your own time answering questions about another team or another team's star player. “Boy, their point guard really torched you guys, lit you up like a Christmas tree” should be met with “Yes, a great player, go ask him what he thinks about my game.” And I always tell high school athletes to be good teammates and always listen to their parents, except sometimes like when a parent won’t stop talking and undermining the coach, because trust me, a high school athlete living a life doesn’t need a psycho parent coming to practices and messing with the coach.
Old school - I got this bit of basketball history from Bud Hitchens, former Cape basketball coach and athletic director, who is more local than a femoral nerve block: “Nineteen years ago on March 3, 1984, No. 16 Cape came back from a 24-point fourth-quarter deficit to beat No. 1 seed Howard in overtime 76 -73. Stan Waterman, now the Stanford head coach, was the point guard for Howard and later transferred to Tatnall. Keith Donovan, now a lawyer, hit a jumper at the buzzer to send the game into overtime. Cape then lost in the semifinals to Caesar Rodney who went on to win the state title under coach Marshall Emery. The state scoring record in 1966 - I gave it to Bill Cordrey for his 55-point performance versus John M. Clayton in a 106 to 44 victory - was held by Bill Burns of Archmere with 81 points. Foster Flint, the legend of Bridgeville, once scored 67 in a game. Barry Lynch and his Tommy Lee Jones-looking self, the 1960s heartthrob of Roxana, was on that John M. Clayton team."
Trainers story - I always joke with my friend Dave Kergaard, a former Mr. Maryland, college fullback at Miami of Ohio, a college heavyweight wrestler and shot and discus guy and lifelong student of fitness and weight lifting before everyone and his grandmother became a personal trainer, that the only benefit to lifting weight is lifting more weights. “Working out ain’t working,“ Grand Mom Rose used to say. “Get the mold off Uncle Cholly’s white stucco house then come talk to me.” Kergaard has injured and disabled himself twice over the last six weeks in his role of Big Pappy to 3-year-old Kaelyn. First he slipped and fell on a metal step at the playground, which could have happened to anyone, but it didn’t. Last week, in his own words, ”Friday night I put together a Dora the Explorer bed and had to tighten 50 screws. I woke up Saturday morning and couldn’t brush my teeth with my right hand. The tendons in my right elbow were so tight I couldn’t use that arm.” Dave said his certification as a Dora the Explorer bed assembler was pending.
Never true - I tell people if anyone ever says that’s the way Fredman would have wanted to go out it is never true. I never want to leave this planet although I would like to see if Luigi the Beagle made it to heaven in 1961. Last week Mister Surgically Repaired Hip and Knee former star athlete guy aggravated all injuries major and minor by tripping and stumbling over a speed bump on the way into the Philadelphia Soft Pretzel Factory at Midway. My recovery was a Sports Center Moment. I looked like the Frankenstein monster on crack or a 1952 Lehigh Avenue drunk running after a trolley car.
Snippets - Boys lax play day comes Saturday at 11 a.m There is also Wilmington Christian at Cape baseball scrimmage if the field is dried out. Girls' lacrosse is down at Bennett for a play-all-day, round-robin scrimmage. Softball has a play day at McKean High School involving 19 teams.
Hear about the Saint Patrick’s Day parade in Dublin? It’s one mile long and five feet high. The inaugural Lucky Leprechaun 5K will go off at noon from Irish Eyes in Milton this Sunday, March 10. Registration opens at 11 a.m. A Saint Patrick’s Day parade will follow because you know how many Irish people live in Milton and you may know both of them. Go on now, git!
