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Cape football sends three Gold players to 65th all-star game

June 15, 2021

Keep your distance - The 65th annual Blue-Gold All-Star Football Game is set for Friday night, June 18, at the University of Delaware. Tickets must be ordered from the University of Delaware websites in blocks of two or four. Just think, “It’s not odd.” It's a social distancing thing. No tickets will be sold at the stadium prior to the game. Cape is sending Ja’Vaughn Burton, Kurtis Wells and Jaden Davis to represent the Gold squad. I ran into the Cape players June 7 at Cape as they were picking up their equipment. Burton and Davis will report to Salisbury University in August to play football for the Seagulls. Wells, a great kid and an awesome defensive player who graduated with a 3.4 GPA, told me he is entering the workforce and may move to Wyoming, where his sister lives. My professional response was, “No really, what are you doing?”  

Linemen for life - Music was playing through the scoreboard at Cape spring football practice June 7. Head coach J.D. Maull said to me, “I’ve become the old guy out here [guessing he’s 43]. I don’t know this music.” I told him, “I do because I’ve never left. I just bob my head to whatever is playing.” It was Drake, not to be confused with David “Drake” Lewis, Cape class of 1978, a runner who was on a state championship cross country and track team. “I got a really big team and they need some really big rings,” J.D. added. “I got some really good help out here with Tyre and Shamar joining the staff.” I didn’t realize that Tyre Maull and Shamar Moore had been working at the Sussex Consortium. Those guys are strong and stalwart interactive personality types with lots of natural empathy for others. Anna Fred, my granddaughter, works with them and said, “One day they were carrying kids to the bus shielding them from the rain and said to me ‘Tell your pop pop we should be Athletes of the Week.’” “Welcome to my house, play that music too loud.” - Flo Rida. 

Gelof brothers - It sounds like a tag team from the heyday of professional wrestling, except the UVA script is not predetermined, it is destiny on the fly chasing karma. On Saturday, I was at great-nephew Zach’s wedding in Princeton, N.J., held at the governor's mansion, mostly a dead zone for cellphone game tracking. A lightning delay had me being a phone guy for four hours only to find Dallas Baptist a winner 6-5. On Sunday, I'm a “garage guy” with an old dog watching the game. When Zack Gelof broke a scoreless tie with an eighth-inning home run, my phone blew up with one-word texts like “wow,” “amazing,” “incredible,” “unfreakingbelievable” and I responded, “I assume you're talking about Zackzilla?” and the response was “Yeah, what are you talking about?” UVA won 4-0 to play a Monday for the Marbles game with a trip to the College World Series in Omaha on the line.   

Snippets - My nephew Mike played in the Pennsylvania Big 33 game in 1990 versus Maryland. Kerry Collins and Kyle Brady (future NFL All-Pros) were his teammates. The late football coach Jerry Mears, who passed away in 1988, coached the Maryland squad in several of those Big 33 games. Local “Pink” Lloyd Mears is his brother. I sat on the steps of a Cape classroom trailer talking to field hockey goalie Nikki Rhoades prior to her senior season 2003-04. Nikki had transformed her body through diet and exercise, and the result was astounding. I saw Nikki Saturday morning at the SoDel Cares 5K. She’s 34, ran 23:33, and still rocks an astounding fitness presence. Nikki had a great college career as the starting goalie for the University of Delaware. I told Brad Myers of the News Journal I was going to copy and paste his many lists of state champions and all-state and all-conference teams and just put my name on them. Brad responded, “People will know it’s not you if there are no jokes.” And that is the quintessence of truth, Ruth. Go on now, git!  

 

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