Share: 

Here we go, so what’s the sports scenario?

Athletes just weary, wondering what’s up
July 3, 2020

“I don’t want to talk about it, how you broke my heart” - Rod Stewart 

The scenarios of moving through phases of reopening our social matrix of connections is particularly problematic for sports, in particular, high school football. It was Duffy Daugherty, the football coach at Michigan State (1954-72) who said back in the 1960s, “Football is not a contact sport. Dancing is a contact sport. Football is a collision sport. “ 

And there is only one way to play a full-tilt collision sport, and that is full-tilt. He who hesitates gets his block knocked off.

There has been talk around the tables of athletic governing bodies of moving football and wrestling to the spring season where they can compete for athletes with the sports of boys’ lacrosse, baseball and track.

Every high school coach knows that success of any program is based on the attraction of blue-chip athletes to your team. There are some one-sport top-of-the-line athletes, but more studs play multiple sports.

Cape would compete for the same frontline athletes who play two, if not all three, of those sports that may be slotted into the spring.

The Cape crew of multi-sport athletes includes Jaden Davis (football and lax), Hank D’Ambrogi (football, wrestling and lax), Lucas Ruppert (football, wrestling and lax), Mikey Frederick (wrestling and lax), C.J. Fritchman (football, wrestling and lax), and Carson Kammerer (wrestling and lax). You have linemen like Josiah Miller (football and track). Each of those athletes would be a huge loss to a team left behind. All kinds of sidebars: If you are a senior football player already committed to a fall program, why would you risk injury playing an entire season of spring football? How about moving girls’ soccer to fall and field hockey to spring, what would that do to change the balance of power? After all, hockey is whack-a-mole with running and 22 people chasing the same mole.

These are unprecedented weird times, and to quote Hunter S. Thompson, “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”

Reading the written wording of all these scenarios is wearisome, leading most athletes and parents to conclude, “Just allow us to play at our own own risk, the same as it’s always been.” 

 

Subscribe to the CapeGazette.com Daily Newsletter