Last thing I drop when things get weird is the gym

Older-generation types send email forwards lamenting the good old day, but on the sports side of the street not all the old days were good. There was a time period after that 1960s hippie/drug/Vietnam phase where it wasn’t so cool to be into sports. I taught at a private school outside Philly and never will forget a volleyball game in physical education class played by long-haired guys in tweed jackets. I’m pretty sure many of them were stoned on hashish; in fact, I had thrown four of them out of my social studies class when they laughed too long and hard at one of my jokes and I said, “I am not here for you to goof off me. I am funny but not that funny.” And they argued that I was the funniest person they ever knew. Anyway I saw a volleyball fall right across the instep of this way cool dude’s desert boot. He just never flinched or moved a metatarsal. I was like 24 years old. I wanted to take the ball and just throw it as hard as I could into his laid-back world, as in his boney face. I don’t like to see no ambition, interest or alertness in young people.

And now I cover high school sports and from swimmers to indoor tracksters, basketball players, grapplers, dancers, weight lifters and cheerleaders all the way down through middle school and YMCA programs, there are just so many young people getting after it more than ever before. So back off the forwards yearning for simpler times with the hoop in the driveway and smear the queer games at the family reunion. Things are better now.

Ali Johnson
I don’t know enough about Ali Johnson to make him an Athlete of the Week, but I do know after watching him play defense at Thanksgiving’s Turkey Bowl tackle football game that he is one of the best hitters I’ve seen the entire fall.

Every guy on a defense thinks he’s a hitter - except cover guys Dione and Asante - but few have that talent to unload and drop someone without getting hurt. With his Emmitt Smith jersey and Red Baron cap Ali Johnson always has that playful look in his eyes and it just doesn’t make sense - and I always hated the happy hitters on the football field.

Bad with the good
I understand the logic perfectly. If an athlete is willing to praise and thank God for catching a touchdown pass, then he may be ready to blame him for dropping one, especially a game winner. Bills receiver Stevie Johnson dropped a 40-yard perfect pass into his breadbasket in overtime that would have beaten the Steelers.

Later Johnson Tweeted, “I praise you 24/7! And this is how you do me! You expect me to learn from this? How? I’ll never forget this! Ever!” Now look out, here come the God protectors talking about Johnson being inappropriate and disrespectful but I think God is cool and finds Johnson’s remark’s funny. The almighty and all-knowing one doesn’t need mere mortals to run interference like some celestial kickoff return.

Snippets
The Cape Takedown Club has teamed up with the Tyrant Wrestling Club to provide an instructional youth wrestling program for children in the Cape Region. Sessions are being held from 6-7 p.m. for children in second grade and younger and from 7-8:30 p.m. for children in third through eighth grade. Wrestlers can register and obtain more information at tyrantwrestling.com. Parents can contact coach Chris Mattioni at 302-249-6457 for more information.

The Cape Takedown Club will sponsor a youth wrestling clinic for children in eighth grade and younger from 9-11:30 a.m., Saturday, Dec. 4. Following the clinic, the Cape High School wrestling team will compete in the first Blue/Gold intrasquad scrimmage. December is gym-joining month for you - or it makes a great gift. There are lots of holiday specials.

The last thing I drop when things get weird is the gym. It is the place where sanity is strengthened.

Invest in yourself, you sun primate. This Sunday, Dec. 5, is a Lewes Polar Bear jump. Jump time is 1 p.m. on the beach in front of the bathhouse at Cape Henlopen State Park. I am the slacking president - sound familiar? - so I will try to make it if the rest of my cosmos is in harmony.