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Local sports scene like a giant jellyfish propelled by weather currents

May 8, 2018

Odd as a cod - A Run for Recovery 5K on Saturday followed by a Revelation Beer on the Run 4-miler on Sunday morning that attracted twice the number of runners, tells you everything you need to know about the fabric of the local beach community. We are a diverse and accepting and smart culture, not prone to making connections where there are none. False equivalences - the races are not connected. Craft beers are fun, and branding of beer to cultural hipness is  a happening.

Addiction is bad, and those in recovery can’t drink craft beers or Jack Daniels even if their “drug of destruction” is heroin. It is complicated, but some people went too hard, too fast, too early and used up all their frequent flyer miles. Now it’s clean and sober, the best way to run a point-to-point brewpub race.

The brewpubs are cool places - not North Philly taproom cool - but OK - not frosted mug at JR’s in West Chester cool - not hot dog rotisserie machine on the bar cool - but have a brat and swear you’re bad ... As you can see, I’ve landed on stupid; after all, I’m older than nachos.

Fragmentation - Local sports is like a giant jellyfish moving with the weather currents; no one is really sure how each individual part works, and social media only serves to confuse it even more, with people tagging photos with grandmom’s name and all kinds of proud mommas talking about travel teams you never heard about. Thursday night at Champions Stadium I showed up to photo shoot the Cape girls; soccer team, a big game versus Polytech. I didn’t know the boys’ lacrosse team was hosting Tower Hill in Legends Stadium -the game had been moved from Friday - and I had no idea it was Scott Brozey night with a silent auction to raise monies for the scholarship.

Dan Cook was in Colorado following Colorado Mesa where his son Frank is an assistant coach. I stayed with soccer - had no idea Mariner Middle School team was being announced at halftime, so not ready for that photo. Tower Hill has fallen off the table in boys’ lacrosse (4-7) and lost to Cape 17-5. Jack Dennis had a 4-goal game followed by Luke D’Ambrogi 3, Jake Brown 2, Andre Currie 2, Gabe Best 2, and single goals from Adem Tekmen, Blake Gipko, Ryan Diacont, and Finbar Rishko. Cape plays at unbeaten Caesar Rodney (13-0) at 7 p.m.,  Wednesday, May 9. Wednesday is also Senior Night for the Cape girls’ lacrosse team versus Caesar Rodney at Champions Stadium.

Race weekend - I covered a Run for Recovery 5K and Middle School Invitational on Saturday - first spring appearance of no-see-ums - and Beer on the Run 4-Miler in the rain on Sunday. There was no way I was getting near Dover on a 90-degree Friday of NASCAR weekend, a city teeming with proms and graduations, to cover Cape baseball and softball at the new Dover High School on Route 8 West. “Stay away from Dover,” my wife Susan advised me. Easy for her to text from Puerto Rico, where she and Carrie had blended into the kaleidoscope of cultures for a week’s vacation.

Cape baseball beat Dover 8-2 to go 12-2 on the season. Austin Elliott got the win and Luke Johnson hit a home run while going 4 for 4. Zach Dale reached base safely all four times and scored 3 runs. Softball lost a heartbreaker to the Senators 6-5. Cape sophomore Kaniah James tied the game in the top of the seventh on a 2-run homer with 2 outs. Mariah Torres had a game-winning infield hit in the bottom of the seventh. Tuesday at Cape is Teacher Appreciation Day so if you’re a teacher and it’s not on your schedule, I wouldn’t read too much into it.      

Snippets - The NCAA women’s D1 lacrosse tournament begins Friday, May 11. Local athletes in the tournament are Eddie Shoop at Florida - they play the winner of Colorado/ Jacksonville; Virginia Tech Hokies Leigh Lingo and Molly Soulé - they play Georgetown; Lilly Dinardo of UVA - the Cavaliers play Stanford; Mercer versus Wagner in a play-in game, Izzy Cryne and Cailey Thornburg are on the Mercer team; and Jamie Trabado on UNC - the Tar Heels await the winner of Virginia Tech and Georgetown. The men’s tournament starts May 13 with 16 teams and no byes.

My nephew Mike, a football guy with a UVA degree and an MBA from UNC, who had hobnobbed with the power elite of Wall Street without ever once wearing a tie, said the men’s lacrosse network has Wall Street wired up and there is no other network like it. The D2 Colorado Mesa Mavericks, 17-2, beat Westminster and advanced to the NCAA tournament for the first time. The Mavs will play top seed Lenoir Rhyne in Hickory, N.C., Saturday, May 12. Franc Cook, former Cape and Lynchburg goalie, is an assistant coach at Colorado Mesa, and don’t ask if Dan Cook will be there. A better question is, if they keep winning, when will he come home?

Go on now, git!

 

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