Sunday morning track clinic at Sesame Street by the Sea

Tim’s track clinic - Sunday morning sunrise to slow-down day, I am heading out the door with my camera at 8:30. Susan asked, “Where are you going?” I say, “It’s about time this Catholic boy resumes going to church.” She responds, “So really, where are you going?” “I’m off to Legends Stadium to take some photos of little people at a track clinic.” It's like Captain Kangaroo and Sesame Street rolled into one Sunday school program. Session one had kids from kindergarten through fourth grade. Tia Jarvis, who won the Henlopen Conference 800-meter run the day before, was working with the K-cup crowd. She called each kid by name – they had no name tags – and Tim Bamforth asked, “How do you know their names?” Tia smiled and said, “I don’t know. I just do.” Coach Ellis Gaulden, the master of agility and speed training, talked to kids about jumping from one hexagon to the other. I think he said “hexagon” six times. Speaking of geometric shapes, at the track championship May 14, I was poised to get a photo of the relay handoff to the anchor leg in the 4-by-100 relay. I heard two coaches not versed in Euclidean geometry refer to the markings on the track as diamonds when the shapes were in fact triangles. “Triangle man, triangle man, triangle man hates person man. They have a fight, Triangle wins, Triangle man.” -They Might Be Giants. 

Frozen face - Back when I was a child running wild on the row house streets of North Philly where everybody knew your name – “Yo, skippy!” – our stupid antics were kept in check by threats of boogie men and having our faces freeze forever if we made a stupid face to mock someone. The Catholic clergy let me know if sports were my only interest that I’d be sentenced to a long life paying rapt attention to sports, and my response was, “Perhaps. What does ‘rapt’ mean?”  

Transfer portals - I watched NCAA college lacrosse May 16, tripling down using Comcast TV, the iMac and Powerbook. Lacrosse commentators are savants of the sport; they know too much that doesn’t interest me. Denver featured three transfers from Yale, most fifth-year, already-graduated guys (they ain’t that stupid), but they still lost to the Loyola Greyhounds 14-13. Athletes chase the ball, then one day  it's suddenly over, leaving the question, “Was it worth it?” We all transition abruptly from great to “I’m still the same old used to be.” 

Journey on - Stop staring at state tournament brackets and matchups and get ready to play somebody, whether on turf, grass or a paved parking lot. Every matchup is like wrestling a dog that bites. “Have fun out there” plants the seed that you may not. I prefer “Get after people” because the game has no shame, there is no justice between the lines, and you can go from hero to goat quicker than white milk to chocolate Bosco. Athletes are mostly fine; it's the family outside the fence that’s tied in more knots than the sloop “John B” during games.  

Amoeba Man - “Let’s split! How can you be in two places at once when you're nowhere at all?” Tracking local tournament teams that have a chance to make noise is a nice problem for 2021 when just a year ago the Gazette was running articles of former championship teams. I can cover two games in the same day, but not at the same time, or if the game times are staggered but 80 miles apart. Family first for me, but some parents have kids on two different teams. I say, “Stay alive in the single-elimination tournament and we will eventually find you.”     

Snippets - Delaney Brooks, a sophomore from Appoquinimink, won the 100 meters at the New Castle County track championships in 12.55 seconds. Delaney is the daughter of Kristen Shipe Brooks, a Cape kid from Kings Highway. Her pop-pop Robert Shipe runs Top of the Line cleaning business. Tatiana Kelsic, a sophomore from Sussex Central, won the Henlopen Conference 100 meters in 12.59. The mask mandate, now relaxed, has sticklers and slackers in close encounters of the weird kind. I'm just cautious and don't want somebody’s Pop Pop dropping F-bombs on my head as happened last fall at a Sunday morning field hockey clinic. Also last fall a woman in a wife beater pointed at my sagging face mask and barked, “Hike it, buster!” I was taught by nuns with a license to smack hard, so when I hear an order, I comply. It's  just a reflex action. Go on now, git!