Share: 
People In Sports

Delledonne and Delaware home on Sunday and ESPN2

Blue Hens host West Virginia at 12:15 p.m.
March 22, 2013

Great Scott - Walking and working the sports beat for a lifetime and trained to pay attention, I’ve learned to spot talent when it jumps into my camera. Coaches are used to hearing that a certain talented athlete has moved away or transferred out, but at Cape over the last five years it's more likely to hear someone transferred in who will enhance an already solid program. Sophomore student athlete Tavon Scott came to Cape from Lake Forest and is out for track, but the big story on Action News is the kid is a quarterback with size and mobility who can throw the football. “He’s a great student, too," said boys' track coach Matt Lindell. “I know he’s going to help us.”

Double down - I am the guy with sports stories who doesn’t mind telling them. You can just ring my bell and I’m off like a disco dancer. Track is the purest of sports involving, running, jumping and throwing implements right out of a Hercules movie. Let’s face it - if you’re a top-shelf athlete, you can help a track team. Cape track teams have included baseball guys like Jerry Maull, a 6-6 high jumper; Tony Zigman, a 21-5 long jumper and sprinter; Vince Glover, a 48-6 triple jumper; Hertford Gibbs, who pitched a no-hitter and jumped 6-6 in the same week; and Brian Mifflin, who rumbled down the track at Dover in the 100 meters looking like Bo Jackson wining the DII state title as 10.8 flashed on the scoreboard. There is less lending lately - just like the banks - as coaches are reluctant to lend out a blue-chip star and risk injury or have the kid conclude “Track is more fun than freezing out here in right field."

One and Delledonne - Her next team loss may be the last look Delaware basketball fans get at Elena Delledonne, and if you just whispered "WNBA," please listen to yourself and ask, “What channel - what season - who won the league last year?” I don’t pay attention to any of the individual awards Elena knocks down - neither does she - I just know she is the most complete basketball player I’ve seen in person since Bill Bradley at the Palestra when he played for Princeton. Nine thousand fans watched Bradley warm up; he never missed a shot. It’s kind of cool in a era when parents speak on behalf of their child (She really wants to play Division I) that the most complete player perhaps ever in the women’s game just wanted to stay home to be close to her family and friends and play at Delaware. This Sunday, March 24, Delaware will host West Virginia at 12:15 p.m. North Carolina will play Albany in the second game. The winners will play at the Bob Carpenter Center at 7 p.m., March 26.  Buy a bigger flat screen today - the games will be broadcast on one of the ESPN networks so ESPNU, too!

Women’s stadium - There is a line in the Spike Lee film “Do The Right Thing” when a character named Buggin' Out asks Sal, the owner of the pizzeria, “Yo, Sal, how come you don’t have any brothers on the wall?” Sal says, "Just Italian-Americans."  Buggin' Out says, “Yeah, well , I don’t see any Italian-Americans in here eating pizza, just us black folks.” Cape is working hard to share two turf fields for sports practices, which sometimes displaces a women’s team from turf field two, perhaps onto Legends Stadium where girls' lacrosse or soccer is less dangerous inside a track practice than boys' lacrosse. But like Buggin' Out, “I don’t see no women on the wall of Legends Stadium."

Snippets - Grand Mom Rose: “If you’ve kicked something bad, learn to stop talking about it.”  She went on, “Kids who are bad get bored being good because no one pays attention to them, at least not as much. It’s hard to break the cycle of annoyance." Signed, sealed, delivered, then returned home. The downside to all the athletes' “signing a letter” photos is that half the athletes return home in the first year. The University of Delaware and Delaware Tech thrive and survive on students coming back to the comforting caress of Big Blue Momma Chicken.

Seaside Sussex residents all have theories about the weather, but if it weren’t for Dan Satterfield, the weatherman on WBOC, I wouldn’t know that a high pressure system over Greenland is responsible for these windy and cool temperatures. Go fly a kite!

Go on now, git!

Subscribe to the CapeGazette.com Daily Newsletter