Training wheels - Cape trainers Hollyann Wettstein Caudell and Ashley Schuster sat on the green Gator on a Monday morning, the first full day of practices for fall sports, processing paperwork and making sure all athletes have up-to-date physicals. The Double A Team processed 400 physicals for fall sports. And there was the occasional  injury intervention: ”You pulled your hamstring running the 2-mile?” and whatever other maladies athletes thought required attention.  Hollyann and Ashley are popular with players and parents because they are collegial and caring along with being unabashed fans once games start. The two trainers are contracted to Cape through Premier Physical Therapy and Sports Performance.  Trainers are nice enough to me, but they never share any injury information; I think it has something to do with hippos.

Cosmic connections - John Yore, a former Cape principal, and I have been friends for 20 years. In many ways it is an unlikely enduring bond, so when we met at Surf Bagel for a 90-minute  sitdown, what did we talk about? Sports and schools, coaching philosophies and pedagogical styles of instruction? Yes, all of that, and also grand theories of the cosmos and the space-time continuum. At one point, John concluded we are all stardust. I summoned a  lyric from the Joni Mitchell song, “Woodstock”: “We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion-year-old carbon." Physicist Albert Einstein and I have three things in common: an interest in time travel, March 14 birthdays and wild hair growing on its own that has never seen a comb. John and I are both interested in the cosmos. Does that make us cosmetologists?

Double A - Social adjustment and anxiety surround families and their freshmen for the first college drop, occurring now leading up to Labor Day. It's a real thing and flows both ways. Add in a sport, and it's even more tricky. I don’t know the stats for students who drop out or transfer in the first year of college or who drop a sport they committed to play, but it's at least 50 percent, if not higher. Adjustments and coping skills are underrated. The whole dormitory experience is frightening. Strangers who become roommates or teammates are nothing like high school homies you grew up knowing.    

Fredman Jumpman - I was on the track Monday taking photos of hockey girls running the 2-mile to the rhythm of rap music. I hear a song by Drake rap the line, “Jumpman, Jumpman, them boys up to somethin’/Uh,uh, uh, I think I need some Robitussin.” I tell Coach Kate, “I just heard Robitussin in a song lyric.” She laughed, either because I didn’t hear it right or because she heard it too. 

Creative moron - I have always been the creative person who can traipse off into left field and miss the obvious. I watched cross country/track runners Logan Crotty (heat one) and Claudia  Stazzone (heat two) run the 2-mile with the hockey girls Monday, so I figured they were out for field hockey. And I thought they’d be faster, but they were middle-of-the-pack runners. A day later, I realized they were pacers, helping the girls with no knowledge of pace break 16 minutes. In the words of Bugs Bunny, “Don’t be a maroon.”

Sports physicals - Mandatory sports physicals are not pass/fail. They result in medical clearance, conditional clearance or disqualification. The purpose of the physical is to identify potential risk from the exertion required to play a sport. There are cardiac conditions and concussion protocols and suggestions for follow-ups. We all know the joke: A grand jury will indict a ham sandwich. I'd add that a ham hoagie could pass a sports physical. “Heart murmurs” detected in teenagers are sometimes disqualifying for athletic participation; ask AI to learn all about it.

Snippets - Wilson Ingerski, a kicker, and Tre Batson, a defensive end, are on the football roster for the Shippensburg Captains. Sophia Walch is a sophomore on the James Madison field hockey roster. Sophia was an all-state player  at Newark Charter and is the daughter of Michelle Hindman Walch and Andy Walch. Addy Basile of Sussex Academy and Cape is a junior on the Ohio University Bobcats field hockey roster. Addy is also a Dewey Beach lifeguard. Calle Short of Sussex Academy is a junior playing field hockey at Lynchburg University. Kacie Rawlings of Sussex Academy is a freshman goalie for Lynchburg University field hockey.  Amanda Evans, head coach of girls' flag football, is a gem. She is a survivor, and her Cape roots go deep. Go on now, git!