Cape to start middle school club lacrosse for girls

My bad - I was on the record in recent history saying I thought the addition of middle school cross country and boys’ lacrosse to the array of sports already offered were bad ideas that were unlikely to catch on. Cross country because how many times can you run around your own middle school without a hall pass, and lacrosse because there was already Atlantic Lacrosse out at Hudson Fields competing for the same kids during the same season. And that must be why no sportswriters are ever paid a consulting fee, because I was just flat-out wrong, and that’s cool. I can give a hundred other examples of a wrong analysis based upon a shared set of facts or what Kellyanne Conway calls “alternative facts.” And now the Cape school board is being asked to include girls’ lacrosse as a middle school sport. Cape girls’ lacrosse, winners of 10 straight state championships, needs to improve its feeder program? The fact is these programs will fly and be successful, adding to student participation, and the best players will do both. Atlantic Lacrosse and middle school, the collateral damage could be girls’ soccer and track. The Cape district decided Jan. 24 to offer girls’ lacrosse as a club sport in 2019, transitioning to a full-blown DIAA sport in 2020.

Title IX - It’s a 1972 gender-equity law we mostly associate with funding and participation levels in collegiate and high school sports. It’s easy to get lost in the weeds on this issue, like all the people who think they know their First Amendment rights, but if that were true, the courts wouldn’t be backlogged with so many free speech cases. I’ve been watching a lot of scholastic wrestling this season, and I’m impressed how many good teams there are in the small state of Delaware. I remember when the University of Delaware had a team and so did Temple. Both universities dropped the sport, and most recently dropped men’s cross country and track. West Chester State College (now WCU) dropped wrestling years ago, and they were a national-caliber D II program. The Golden Rams’ website lists 14 sports for women and only nine for men. Leveling up by gender only counts when achieving gender equity for women. The law has no interest in men left behind. Penn State has wrestling and lists 15 sports for men and 14 for women. Drexel and Penn both have wrestling teams. It’s easy to roll around the mat and come back to Delaware and Temple, and encourage both to bring back wrestling, but it’s unlikely to happen.

Hall of fame game - The only moment being a member of a sports hall of fame gets any play is the night of the banquet, where the inductees get to give a speech thanking their family for being the wind beneath their wings as they smile and smirk while twirling a chicken leg. Otherwise, it all falls into the “I can tell it, but I can’t sell it” classification, like your online master’s degree. At the Henlopen Conference Indoor Track Championships Jan. 24, I spoke to Dover coach Jim Solomon, who is in the Delaware Afro-American Sports Hall of Fame. I know that because I wrote a story about it, and Gentleman Jim is one of the good guys on the circuit. I was sitting in my folding chair at the end of the long jump pit getting sand kicked in my face while taking photos and realized, “Hey, I’m in the Delaware Track and Field Hall of Fame, there must be someone I can tell,” but alas, there was no one. But if I brought my 1984 team to that meet. I think we’d win it. Hall of fame coaches have the best conversations with themselves.

Snippets - Big Tuesday for Cape sports, as the swim teams are at Sussex Academy, while girls’ basketball hosts Polytech at 5:15. The undefeated JV girls host Polytech at 4 p.m. They beat the Panthers 22-21 Dec 11. Jamie Trabaudo (Polytech) is listed as a sophomore on the University of North Carolina lacrosse roster. Jamie, an academic junior, has endured two ACL surgeries since arriving at Chapel Hill. Many college rosters have yet to update from 2018. Brooks Buck (Cape) is a freshman defender for the Ursinus College Bears. The unsung heroes on most sports teams are the managers. Some colleges even offer financial aid to managers, and many make the best coaches. Go on now, git!