Live streaming of sports is mostly better than being there
Live stream of consciousness - A stream of consciousness in storytelling using either written or spoken words - it’s what I do traveling to my destination guided by a broken GPS meandering off road and doubling back so many times my audience is convinced I’m the white brother of Daffy Duck. Last Friday through Sunday I was all over the NCAA field hockey championships with computer live streaming while also tracking Delaware football on Live Stats while watching college football at the same time. Field hockey is a total roll of the dice. Just one bad move and your season is swamped and scuttled like a pontoon in a typhoon. Maryland lost to Duke 3-2 in the semis while North Carolina lost to Connecticut in the tournament’s first penalty shootout. The shootout replaces the penalty stroke with each team getting five players to dribble in on the goalie from the 23-meter line and attempt a score with an eight-second clock running. UConn then dominated Duke in the final. The Huskies have seven European players on their roster, and if you check such things, all Division I schools are dragging the net through that talent pool, sort of like having Ford 150 engines built in Mexico. Shippensburg won the DII hockey title. Cape Principal Brian Donahue is a graduate of The Ship, as is Cape Gazette reporter Nick Roth. Speaking of name-dropping, Bowdoin of Brunswick, Maine, beat Salisbury 1-0 to capture the DIII crown. Bowdoin counts among its alumni writers Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (class of 1825) and U.S. President Franklin Pierce. Bowdoin’s students average 670 in each of the three SAT tests, but before field hockey I had never heard of the place or Franklin Pierce either. The mascot Polar Bear can be traced to Admiral Robert Perry, Bowdoin class of 1877, who discovered the North Pole in 1909 - “Quick, turn around, there are hungry bears in the banks of snow.”
Out of Africa - Crazy Cape guys Will Albanese and Billy Peden just returned from Tanzania after climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. Will is a pharmacist at Beebe, and Billy is a teacher at Georgetown Elementary. Willy and Billy are both incredibly fit but won’t bore the shoes off you talking about it, nor will they call their climb life-changing; rather, both are zany, slightly offbeat personalities just out there having fun. There is a YouTube video slugged Willimanjaro. Colin “Copernicus” O’Neill was also part of the expedition.
Hack attack - I’m getting ready for high school basketball, but junior varsity foul festivals where up-and-down action shows complete unawareness of the score I find torturous. How about some real defense and less coast to coast, one-on-one Hall and Oates stuff?
Skinny and slow - I was recently asked, “I heard you ran a marathon; what was your time?” I answered honestly, "Three hours and 38 minutes.” The reaction was predictable - “Get out of here!” Here’s what I don’t get: if you train and are skinny and still slow, then what’s the point? "Get out of here!"
Side effects - Musclebound types are strutting around gyms, many of whom should wear T-shirts that read, “I’m a juicer!” I’m concerned that some high school athletes will make bad decisions for quick results and get into serious health trouble. Drug-free hard work is still the best way to go. Back when I was in college, I once did toe rises in my garage with 110 pounds on my back to the entire side of The Doors' album thinking of my girlfriend Susie Thomas, a Twentieth Century Fox.
Snippets - Kim McPike, whose children Kate, Max, Dan and Jack all graduated from Cape, is a graduate of North Dakota State University, the No. 1 seed in the FCS 24-team football tournament. Her husband Jeff graduated from Yale, which lost to Harvard last weekend. “Let’s fight for Harvard’s glorious name; won’t it be peachy if we win the game!” - Tom Lehrer. The Chanticleers of Coastal Carolina, winners of the Big South Conference, finished the season 10-2 after being tagged with a 70-10 loss to South Carolina. They open the FCS tournament at home versus Bethune Cookman at 1 p.m., Saturday, Nov. 30. The game is on ESPN 3. George Glenn, former Cape football coach and athletic director, is the director of football operations at Coastal Carolina. Delaware finished the season 7-4 when with a “Hay’s in the barn” certain victory in view, leading Villanova 34-12 with eight minutes remaining, the Hens lost the game 35-34, proving to the Wildcats there's no offense like a bad defense. Go on now, git!
