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People In Sports

Cape boys’ teams had great year in sports

May 31, 2013

Waited all season - There have been more than 70 Cape Gazette athletes of the week just during spring season, and in my own mind I excluded my granddaughters Anna and Lizzie from consideration, just planning to bring them into focus if they helped lead Cape to a state championship. So today they make the lineup and more importantly make the refrigerator.

Talking 'bout boys - The Cape senior boy athletes graduating should never be compared to the girls, because what sense does that make? I’m a guy, so if someone told me former Cape great now masters runner Sonja Friend-Uhl could lap me three times in a four-lap race, I’d have to respond, “Just what exactly is your point?” The Cape 2012-13 boys were 8-2 in football and 11-3 in soccer, both state tournament teams. They were Henlopen champs in basketball and a tournament team. The swim team went 10-1; wrestling had a winning season and a state champion in Thomas Ott. The lacrosse team made it to the semifinals of the state tournament. Golf was 8-6 , baseball 11-7, tennis 8-5 and the track team 12-1 over the dual-meet season. That is a great year no matter how you analyze it.

Know when to shut up - Thinking of the Kenny Rogers song with a few changes in lyrics. I was at the state championship field hockey banquet in 1995 where each senior wrote an open letter thanking the important people in her life, and I remember sighing, “Enough already; I can’t take anymore.” I’m much more comfortable and familiar with disappointment. I don’t want to be the trapped puffer fish floating in a tidal pool off the salt flats of Cape Henlopen Point waiting for high tide to take me back out to deep water. Cape just won its fifth straight state title in girls' lacrosse and I need to shut up about it but here I am with my own column and emcee of the upcoming banquet. But I am prepared for the moment when important people call me in for a meeting and simply say, “Good run, now please go home and stay there.”

Why so much running? - I remember covering a Little League baseball extra-inning tournament game in the dead of summer that lasted four hours and had 13 errors. Afterward, as welts from insect bites made my back feel like it was blowtorched by a redneck sweating a copper joint, a coach asked me, “How come you write so much about running?” I can tell you that over four days of Memorial Day weekend, close to 1,500 athletes participated in running, and I find that worthy of my time as long as I can stand still and take pictures.

Snippets - Thursday night in a junior league baseball game between Cape Orioles and Laurel won by Cape 18-1, Quinn Donohoe, completing his freshman year at Cape, threw a no-hitter, striking out 15 batters in addition to going 4 for 5 at the plate including a three-run homer and driving in 9 runs. The Mighty Quinn will get his chance next spring to be a difference maker for the Cape baseball team. P.J.’s Vikings Lacrosse Camp featuring counselor Meg Bartley will be June 18, 19 and 20 from 9 a.m to noon at Champions Stadium for girls entering fifth through ninth grades. The cost is $120, checks made payable to CHWLB. Contact pjlaxcamp@gmail.com for more information.

Ever notice with all the end-of-the-year formal evaluations in the teaching and coaching business that students and athletes, the ones with the most firsthand experience, never have a voice in the process? You know why, don’t you? It’s because we either don’t trust their judgment, figuring their personal biases get in the way, unlike us crazy adults, or we’re afraid of what they may tell us. But kids talk a lot, and if there’s a theme emerging - good or bad - it's smart to listen. Smell the salt air and eat a boiled hotdog for breakfast. Doesn’t get any better. Go on now, git!

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