Postcards from the Edge of Fitness: Looking for feel-good stories
Halftime with Hazzard - Nolan Hazzard was a linebacker at Cape on the 1979 state championship football team that played a five-three defense; the lineup also included linebackers Hertford Gibbs and Vincent Daniels. There have never been three better linebackers at the same time on any defense in the state of Delaware. I remember coach Ron Dickerson of Seaford watching Cape play in 1979 and saying to me, "Those backers line up too tight and then too wide - you just can't play backers like that unless you have those three guys, then you can play them anywhere you want.” Hazzard accepted a scholarship to Virginia Tech and started as a fifth-year senior at the strong safety position. Asked recently if he still had defensive back speed, Nolan said, ”Absolutely not. I'm running about a 5.5 now." Brandon Hazzard, Nolan's son, played defensive end for the Cougars of Pulaski County High School in Virginia on a 12-1 team. He attended Hargrave Military Academy after high school but after a couple of months received a scholarship to Kent State University. Brandon, a sophomore, is 260 pounds of muscle and was recruited to defensive tackle and end for the Golden Flashes. He benches somewhere in the neighborhood of 460 pounds. Look for his name on the 2012 roster.
Relics from Robinson - Dr. Dave Robinson called assistant Riders basketball coach Janavor Weatherspoon from the locker room before the Cape game on Jan. 6 to give Janavor some memorabilia from Weatherspoon's playing days for the Oklahoma State Cowboys. ”Spoon” was a high flier in basketball during his student years at CR, where Robinson spent a career as principal and then superintendent. After graduation, Weatherspoon took a circuitous route that landed him at Odessa Junior College in Texas, where he was an all-American. After Odessa, Janavor accepted a scholarship to play at Oklahoma State and played there for two years as the sixth man. In his senior year, 2004, the Cowboys made it to the NCAA Final Four in San Antonio, where they lost to Georgia Tech, which was beaten by Duke for the national championship. Weatherspoon played basketball overseas after graduation from Oklahoma but returned to the Dover area last summer and landed a job at Caesar Rodney. “I gave him programs from the 2004 NCAA tournament, T-shirts from the tournament, an OS jacket, mug, and other things Linda [Robinson, Dave's wife] and I had collected,” Robinson said. “The framed picture was the Oklahoma State promotional schedule for the 2003-04 season. As a senior, Janavor was one of three players to be highlighted with an individual photo.”
Snippets - University of Delaware junior basketball player Elena Delle Donne is so “stupid good” it becomes boring to keep talking about her. On Jan. 8, 21st-ranked Delaware beat George Mason 66-54 as Delle Donne dropped in 40 points and grabbed 15 rebounds. She has scored more than 30 seven times this season. She is the most technically sound basketball player - female or male - since Bill Bradley was NCAA Player of the Year for Princeton in 1965.
Tebow is bad, not good. He alone caused more f-bombs to be dropped at one time in America than any event since the famed O.J. white Bronco chase. He is therefore evil. But seriously, this phenomenon of Tebow and the Broncos is not about religion; it's about hope and belief by teammates who know he can't throw but get open anyway. Demaryius Thomas is the name of the guy who caught the pass and took off for a touchdown. His nickname is Bay-Bay and his dad is called Boo-Boo. Bay-Bay had 204 yards receiving for the game.
I'm thinking of doing a Postcards from the Edge of Fitness series, just a full-body photo and short biography of everyday people who through nutrition and exercise have transformed themselves into much healthier people. I'll be keeping an eye on Charlie Smith, a card-carrying member of the Linemen for Life Club and a deputy mayor of Wawa, whom I last saw Jan. 7 purchasing not one but two bananas for a long ride to a field hockey tournament in Pennsylvania. To quote an REM song, 'It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.”
Go on now, git!
