Black Girls Run back in Dewey for DBP five and dime races
Black Girls Run - It's a national organization founded several years ago to promote health and fitness among adult Afro American women. I see the shirts here and there during the summer racing circuit and every so often, always at a Dewey Beach race, I encounter a large group of 25 interconnected friends who show up to run a race. On Aug. 2, it was the Dewey Beach Patrol 5K and 10K, which attracted 216 to the 10K distance and 302 runners who elected to run the 5K. A common start is quite the spectacle as 518 runners rounded the turn from Dickinson Avenue onto Route 1 north. Most of the group Black Girls Run elected the longer 10K distance, running at a slow but steady pace. I assembled the women before the race along the beach with Rehoboth Bay as a backdrop for a group photo and asked, “Didn’t I take your photo last year?” A voice rang out, “That was two years ago. We missed last year.” The retired teacher in me projected a voice to the entire posed and composed group suggesting, ”Maybe we should change the name of your group to Blacken N Slacken.” They all spontaneously laughed and one of the women, Tamara Barnes (sister to Ricky Thompson), shouted out, “He was my teacher!” That gave me a free pass for more corny jokes, but I’m not as quick as I used to be.
Marion Lisehora - I once interviewed senior athlete Marion Lisehora for a feature story as I had nominated her for the statewide Herm Reitzes Award for service to sports, which she won, and I had the honor of presenting her to a room of 300 people at the Delaware Sportswriters and Broadcasters Banquet before it was scaled back to a bagged lunch affair. The interview at the Rehoboth Diner lasted three hours and when I got up to stretch Marion grabbed my wrist and said, "Wait, we’re not finished,” and I said, "I know, my left hamstring is quivering. I just have to stand for awhile." That is the personality profile of the athlete I call “The Admiral," a University of Maryland graduate who rode the diving horse on the Atlantic City Steel Pier before teaching elementary physical education for 30 years in the Indian River School District. She was renowned for her gymnastics troupe that sometimes performed at halftime of basketball games. But Marion is the unrelenting lifetime athlete who brought more older athletes to fitness than any other single persons combined into one person. On Aug. 1, she was at the Dam Mill 5K as a Hall of Fame member. She sought me out, and she was wearing medals and a ribbon from the recent National Senior Games in Minneapolis that included 12,000 competitors. There was a gold medal for volleyball age 75-plus, a bronze for women’s doubles pickleball 80-plus and a fifth-place ribbon for mixed doubles pickleball. I wrote stuff down, fearing I might be forced to belly flop off the diving platform into her backyard pool a block from Cupola Park in Millsboro if I messed up. Seriously, Marion is the versatile lifelong athlete none of us could ever be, but I can only speak for myself and all the people I know.
Fantasy economics - I always thought fantasy football was for goober geeks who own a Barry Manilow Greatest Hits CD and hide in plain sight inside a statistical salad of interconnected factoids. But that has changed, as former players and even coaches are in fantasy leagues. Although I may think it is lame, I’m sure most people think taking 1,400 photos at a 10K race is pretty lame also. But will everyone please shut up about player contracts and who is worth whatever they pay them? I don’t want to hear about franchise tags and renegotiations by players who have outperformed their contracts. Russell Wilson's favorite expression is “Ignore the noise,” and his fans were so happy he signed a 4-year $87 million contract, which included a $31 million signing bonus. I have my fingers in my ears trying to ignore all this “money noise.” Wilson is a complex character who reportedly gets under the skin of some of his black teammates; just google Percy Harvin and read all about it.
Snippets - Practices for fall scholastic sports begin Saturday, Aug. 15, and in the words of New York Jets linebacker Bart Scott, “Can’t wait!”
Cape’s new head coach of girls' basketball Lauren Carra had a meet and greet with Cape players and parents July 30 in the Cape theater. Lauren will be the teacher/coach in the high school building, as she is part of the special education department. The difference between a theater crowd and a gym crowd is no one ever stood up in a crowded theater and shouted, "What was that?” Go on now, git!
