Lacrosse girls playing basketball, just call them athletes 

Happening in the moment - Multisport athletes Ally Diehl, Mairead Rishko, Amara Fruchtman, Mikaela Gordon and Haley Gamuciello decided to play basketball this winter. People were calling them “the lacrosse girls” on the basketball team. The team was eliminated from the state tournament by Ursuline March 4, but earlier that afternoon, the lacrosse girls were running a timed mile. Varsity candidates must break 7:30, while JV girls must meet a standard of 8:30. “It’s overall the fastest group we’ve ever had here,” said coach Lindsey Underwood. The field was highlighted by a 5:50 run by Avary Miller. The basketball girls were quickly back to lacrosse and participated in a play day March 7 at Stephen Decatur. 

Cross country guys - A cadre of Cape cross country runners ran in the Lucky Leprechaun 5K March 8, with Riley Stazonne and Jason Baker cruising to the win in about 17:04. Katie Macklin, 43, of Dover, was first female and sixth overall in 17:34. A total of 604 runners completed the course, most of whom are local and run one race a year because it’s in Milton.

Allen Jackson - I call him “Chattahoochee.” He carries the flag and runs in full fire gear. Inside, it gets hotter than a hoochie-coochie. Allen completed his 100th mile of 343 planned leading up to the Tunnel to Towers race this fall. Last year, Allen raised $1,355. He was the parade marshal at the St. Patrick’s Day Parade March 8, and is apparently a cousin of everyone with a 684 phone exchange. 

Dead cat bounce - “A short-lived recovery in the price of a declining asset before it continues its downward trend.” Investors are familiar with the phrase, just like sports agents and pundits are familiar with the concept dead cap hit in the NFL, which is a charge against a team's salary cap for a player no longer on the roster. It represents sunk cost, reducing available cap space for other players. Some professional athletes are dead cat bouncers and dead cap hitters, like Ben Simmons, Tijuan Walker and Nick Castellanos. 

Triple 100 - Mikey Frederick scored a third-period hat trick for Mercer men's lacrosse in a loss at Marquette, as the senior reached a milestone of 100 career points. Mikey, the 2022 Cape Athlete of the Year, is the only member of the double-100 club at Cape with 100 wrestling wins (and a state title) and 100 lacrosse goals. Mikey will graduate in May with a degree in engineering, and if you know him – Mikey wouldn't say boo in a Halloween parade – it's Grandpa Fredman bringing the hype, as I do for everyone else because I’m always celebrating and remembering people at their best.

Old-fashioned idiom - I set sail March 7, tacking hither, thither and yon – an old-fashioned idiom – to move in many disorganized directions or places, a chaotic constant motion over scattered locations. This expression is considered archaic, just like me. The grandkid generation of lacrosse players were Meredith, a Cape freshman lacrosse play day at Decatur; Lina at Salisbury; Will playing for Milford at DE Turf; James at The Factory in Frankford; and Mikey playing for Mercer at Marquette. I hear from young parents all the time about chasing their kids “all over hell and half of Georgia,” which is another American idiom that means traveling over a huge, spread-out territory. 

DE Turf - Parking lot protocol finds most everyone is privileged or placard-carrying place holders, except by 9 a.m. on a Saturday all slots are taken. Last lacrosse season, a grandma offered to carry my chair as she had a free arm; her other arm was rolling an oxygen tank. There were 19 boys’ lacrosse teams at DE Turf March 7, and another 19 girls’ teams on a playoff schedule. I remember when DE Turf was in the concept stage and they recruited local Olympian Carrie Lingo to help hype the idea. My position of “it will never work” made it a “lead pipe cinch” (another idiom) that it would. Richie Ashburn used the expression all the time for would-be base stealers. “He looks runnerish, Harry.”

Going Columbo - A head basketball coach during a post-game interview once told me, “They were playing a zone, and everyone knows you have to drive against a zone.” Now that is the opposite of what everyone knows, but if I write it down and publish what he said, we would both look clueless. Political press conferences are sometimes the same, and the reporter’s job is to publish what is said, not to conduct a class on foreign policy. This stuff always meshes together sports and the larger culture, society and foreign policy. Just follow the World Baseball Classic and World Cup to learn about world cultures. 

Strike up the band - Chris Burkhart, the Cape band director, sent me this update: “If you're watching any Duke basketball in the coming weeks, keep an eye out for Katie Costello in the basketball band. [She’s a] freshman at Duke and was the drum major and tennis player at Cape. Her older brother Tyler was a good wrestler and sax player and is at UD, and older sister Madison was a swimmer, tennis player and French horn player at Cape, and she's at Cornell. Awesome people, great family.” 

Snippets - Lizzie Frederick and Taylor Gooch, lacrosse teammates at Cape and Temple, will coach the Fred Thomas girls’ lacrosse team this spring. Lynn Richardson, who hasn’t lost a hockey or lacrosse game since Fred Thomas began play, is recovering from successful surgery but will take the spring season off. Go on now, git!