Looking back 20 years with Cape quarterback Jonny Howard

Jonny Howard - The No H Cape quarterback, wearing his black Big H logo Under Armour shirt, showed up in my driveway last week for some corrective Comcast splicing. Jonny Howard played at Cape 20 years ago this fall, the year Cape celebrates 50 years of sports and the 40th anniversary of the 1979 state championship team. But in fall 1999, Howard led Cape to a 9-1 record under coach Brian Donahue. The Vikings hosted Caesar Rodney in perhaps the greatest home game ever on the crabgrass field while also making room for the 1982 team coached by Jim Alderman that beat Newark at Cape 15-14 for a berth in the state championship game. I remember subtleties embedded in games past, usually dazzling people. “How do you remember those details?” Except Jonny. He is the guy who is a half step ahead of any story I may tell from his era, especially if I told it to him before. 

Gift horse - The sport of football has the roughest preseason this side of band camp. There are always the week one walk-offs and a few who say, “I’d really rather concentrate on band or run cross country.” Has a tackle ever excelled in cross country? Of course you can excel at anything you put your mind to, but the answer is no! Fifteen-year-old sophomore Jack Thompson decided he’d like to try football for the first time since seventh grade. Jack admitted he wasn’t really into it. But now Jack is 6-foot-3 and 220 pounds, an athletic kid with soft hands who is projected as a tight end. “I can’t tell you how good it feels to be a part of this team. I’m really loving it right now,” Jack said. “We need to get more basketball guys and lacrosse guys,” coach J.D. Maull said. 

Connection of confidence - With 44 games left in the season, the Phillies fired the hitting coach because a lineup of millionaires can’t hit. They hired their former manager, 75-year-old Charlie Manuel, who won a World Series and was later fired because the Phillies stopped winning. The current manager Gabe Kapler is a different cat and most likely on thin ice if the team doesn’t secure a wild card berth. But Charlie and Gabe should get along because neither really needs the other and they can relate because they can’t relate, may as well be from different planets. Bring back Mayo Smith (1955-58)! Esteemed sports writer Red Smith, from an era when sportswriting was literature, wrote of Mayo Smith, “He is tall and rangy, with graying brown hair and young, pleasant features smoothly tanned. There are crinkly lines of laughter around his blue eyes.” The analytics era is here and the literature era is gone. It opens the door for the barren wasteland that is modern-day sports analysis.   

Muppet Alderman - Coach Jim Alderman usually introduced himself on the phone by saying, “This is Alderman.” He’s a one-name, last-name muppet here at Sesame Street by the Sea. The only Cape coach to win a state title in football. A Facebook post by his daughter Abby hit the social network Aug. 1. “Dad has pancreatic cancer. The good news is it hasn’t spread. He is a surgery candidate. The plan is chemo starting Wednesday and surgery to follow once inflammation in the pancreas is reduced.” On Sept. 27, Cape will honor the 1979 team at Legends Stadium at halftime of the Dover game. It’s unlikely Alderman will be cleared to make that trip up from Florida. All the Aldermans can be found on Facebook, so by all means make contact and share stories. 

Snippets - All 23 student-athletes on the 2018 Temple field hockey team earned 2018-19 Big East All-Academic Team honors, as announced by the league Tuesday. Annie Judge is a rising sophomore on the team, and that makes parents as proud as a hat trick scored in a big game. Well, it’s pretty close, anyway. Milford field hockey welcomed about 50 hopefuls to preseason tryouts. According to middle school coach Rebecca Pepper, that includes about eight eighth-graders now varsity-eligible for the first time. The talent bubble shifts depending on decisions to keep kids on varsity or drop them down to JV or stay with middle school. Double-clutching and changing gears. Speaking to high school-level male players who call themselves athletes, but drink and smoke weed to stay cool: Please do everyone a favor and either quit substances or quit playing sports, because you are fooling absolutely no one but yourself. Go on now, git!