Fast Times at Sussex Central High; sprinters snap like heat lightning

Five fast guys - The Sussex Central boys’ track team won both sprint relays in the Division I State Track Championships at Dover High Saturday afternoon, May 18. P.J. Stratton, Dom Smith, Don Saragino and Andre Teagle threw down on the field in the 4-by-200-meter relay, winning in 1:28.12, beating William Penn at 1:29.07. The win was the very first state championship relay won by the Golden Knights. Sussex Central came back to win the 4-by-100m clocking 42.14, which was a division meet record. William Penn was second in 42.43. That team was Andre Teagle, Dom Smith, Dom Saragino and Mahki Herring.

The handoffs were flawless in that race, as third leg Dom Saragino blew it open running the turn and a fast field chased anchorman Mahki Herring to the finish line. The Golden Knights placed second in the Division I team points to Salesianum, 95-89. A.I. DuPont won the DII boys’ title.  Cape finished in 12th place. Padua won the DI girls’ title, while Tatnall captured the girls’ DII title. The Cape girls placed 10th in the DI standings. Sussex Central is coached by Jen Cawthern and Derek Shockro.

Fast freshman - Cape freshman Ethan Ederly captured my attention at the Henlopen Conference meet, dropping his personal best time by 10 seconds in the 1,600, running 4:44 to place fourth overall. On Saturday at the State Championship meet running from the slow heat, Ethan ran 4:35, the fastest mile by a Cape freshman ever until someone proves differently. He has dropped his personal best time 20 seconds over the last two weeks. Ethan placed sixth overall, and the winning time was just 4:32. Back in spring 1986 under the direction of coach Bill Degnan, Otis White won the slow heat of the 800 in 1:57.1, which held up as none of the fast guys were able to beat his time.

Whack a Gator - I watched  two walkover running-clock money-round Cape lacrosse games on consecutive days this past weekend as the Cape boys beat Milford 26-5 on Friday night in the Henlopen Conference Championship game, then on Saturday the girls’ team hosted Tatnall in a quarterfinal matchup and won 21-2. Going forward, what it all means is not much, as coaches Mark D’Ambrogi and Lindsey Underwood talk to their teams about focus and respecting the next opponent. Pressure goes with the program for Cape lacrosse; you are always a bigger story if you lose than when you win.

Snippets - Cape’s Lindsay Monigle, a freshman at West Chester University, was on the lacrosse team that lost in the DII National Championship to Adelphi on Sunday 11-5. Lindsay appeared in 16 of 23 games for the Golden Rams and scored 8 goals and had 2 assists on the season. Her two-sport classmate and teammate at Cape, Jody Boyer, played for Shippensburg University field hockey last fall; the Raiders  won the DIII National Championship, beating East Stroudsburg in the final game 1-0. Statcast in sports is runaway technology at its most meaningless.

How about this nugget from Bryce Harper’s sixth-inning two-run home run that propelled the Phillies to a 7-5 over the Rockies? An exit velocity of 106.2 and now he has at least one batted ball with an exit velocity of over 100 in five straight games.

Catch any home run ball with your face 10 feet after it leaves the bat, then talk to me about exit velocity. Tiger Woods was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Donald Trump, and I honestly thought, “What did Tiger do?” Some other Medal of Freedom winners include the crew of Apollo 13, Mother Teresa, Aretha Franklin, Roger Staubach and Joe Biden. Little athletes doing punishment laps after a poor performance and barking dads who are ruining their own kids’ confidence and love of the game – what is there to do when you see it, and we all do?

It’s up to the director of the venue to have a sit-down with the parent; a random intervention by a stranger will probably not go well, but watching psychological abuse of a child in the public arena puts us all in a quandary, and I haven’t been in one since I bought my own washing machine.

Go on now, git!