Dave Frederick inducted into Delaware Sports Museum & Hall of Fame

Longtime Cape Gazette sports writer/columnist, and Cape Henlopen High School coach and teacher Dave “Fredman” Frederick is among nine prominent men and women inducted into the Delaware Sports Museum & Hall of Fame during a May 12 ceremony at the Chase Center on the Riverfront in Wilmington.

Fredman was joined by many of his friends and family, including Cape Gazette Publisher Chris Rausch and the paper’s founders, Publisher Emeritus Dennis Forney and Editor Emeritus Trish Vernon.

After a decade of coaching Cape Henlopen High School to track and cross country championships, Frederick became a sports columnist, building a statewide following over the next four decades. 

He coached Cape’s boys to Division II titles in outdoor track in 1976 and 1978, indoor track championships in 1984 and 1985, and Cape’s first cross country championship in 1977. He was the state’s Indoor Track Coach of the Year in 1984 and 1985. He was inducted into the Delaware Track & Field Hall of Fame in 2016. 

In 1982, he began writing a weekly column at The Whale, a Sussex weekly, then moved to the Cape Gazette in 1993, where he has since written a twice-weekly column, with additional coverage and photography of all sports in all seasons. Frederick became one of the few weekly sportswriters with credentials to cover the Baltimore Ravens and Philadelphia Eagles. He has served as a sports analyst on WGMD radio, and he wrote an anthology of short stories, “In A Class By Myself.” 

In 1982, he organized the Lewes Polar Bear Club, with winter plunges into the chilly waters of the Atlantic Ocean. He later collaborated with Delaware Special Olympics to make one of those events into a fundraiser, attracting hundreds. As a trailblazer of organized distance running downstate, he helped organize the Lewes Seashore Marathon and other races. 

An all-conference football and basketball player at Bishop Egan in Philadelphia’s Catholic League, Frederick played football at Temple University. In 1975, he came to Delaware to replace Tom Hickman as Cape’s track coach and to assist the football team.