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Academics balanced by sports is a false equivalence

No makeup days for lost seasons
July 28, 2020

False equivalencies - There are no physical requirements to earn a seat in an honors or Advanced Placement class. You can wheeze through the semester and you don’t have to be a team player. But the academic requirements seep into sports programs. Society is perhaps fearful that the value structure will be turned upside down with the ice cream ball on the bottom while the sugar cone of sports points to the stars. Fredman’s recommendation for pandemic protocols is to give the kids (athletes) from 3 p.m. onward to play teams only in Delaware with no fans, just livestream all the games. During the day, come up with whatever hodgepodge of hybrid, digitized teaching platforms you think might work knowing you are pushing the bell curve to the right and leaving more children behind than the peloton at a Jenny Craig invitational cross country race.  

Makeup days - A day lived is a day spent; you cannot make it up. Schools were big on making up snow days, but the day you are home rolling in the snow cannot be made up. Sports seasons canceled cannot be made up either. They are lost and they are gone. It’s like having an ACL injury with all good ligaments. Like flunking off a team with all good grades. Last spring’s uncontested sports seasons hurt all athletes in individual ways. Looking at the fall seasons, a sense of sadness is settling over Sesame Street by the Sea. I’m thinking of senior Jaden Davis, a lacrosse and football player. Jaden was on a state championship lacrosse team as a sophomore, then junior season got canceled. He is a beast of a running back in football and will be the featured back and go-to guy in Cape’s offense. If the season gets lost, Jaden gets lost with it. Inside my own extended family, if anyone asks a question regarding sports and one of my nine grandchildren, I tell them, “I will venture an opinion if asked, but basically I don’t get a vote in the decision-making process.” That’s why I spout off in my sports column like a beached beluga. Hey, come to think of it, fall sports get canceled and Fruity Pop Pop may be retired like his high-top Chucks from 1964. 

Kruk Off! - I watched three tedious broadcasts of the Phillies versus the Marlins, and they were painful. I just don’t get the attraction of color commentator John Kruk in the Philadelphia marketplace. I like “The Krukster” well enough, but I like a lot of people who are Phillies fans who don’t deserve that job. Ben Davis is a Malvern guy and also likable, except Davis offers insight and observations you don’t see coming, like the Frankford El. 

Tearing up turf - I knew a Philly guy in the early ’70s that sold used AstroTurf to schools that didn’t need it and had never thought about buying it. My man was a millionaire and I’m sure he was crooked but just couldn’t figure out how he did it. The carpet at Legends Stadium is about to come up to be replaced with a new rug. You don’t exactly bring a football field to the landfill, so why not lay it down on the field in Lewes or at Mariner or Beacon? And if there are good reasons why not, rest assured that somewhere down the line, someone is getting paid.  

Snippets - I talked to my young dog-walking friend in Dewey Saturday morning about 7 a.m. She walks like 11 dogs in an hour. I told my friend Jerry McNesby standing nearby, “You know that means 11 really lazy people are sleeping two blocks from here.” What, you can't get up and walk your own dog? And during the day some of these dogs go to doggie daycare. What is up, man? Scott Kammerer, the CEO of SoDel, was a 1991 heavyweight state champion wrestler in New Jersey for East Brunswick High, a school named after a bowling ball. Muppet Scott is a blended, giving personality type who kicks back and on occasion gets kicked out, all in the same season. I know he taught my grandson Mikey the cement mixer move when Mikey was 10. The problem with knowing the cement mixer is as you age you find more reasons to drop the mortar fork on some annoying pestilence. Alumni girls’ lax will play Thursday night, July 30, at Champions Stadium. Go on now, git! 

 

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