Coach Matt Lindell, the sock puppet of Cape cross country

Screensocked - I was talking with veteran professional journalists Andy Walter and Marc Clery of the Delaware State News Nov. 28 at Killens Pond prior to the running of the Henlopen Conference girls’ championship race. Seven varsity Cape girls came over to me before heading to the starting line. You could cut the tension with a butter knife after the boys had delivered a championship, and it was showdown and throwdown time for the favored girls. “Fredman, you’ve got to take a picture of a Lindell sock, and we want to see it on the front page of the Cape Gazette,” Elizabeth Melson said. E-Beth hiked up her sock and posed her lower leg and I was on it like Buster Brown in a shoe store. There were multiple smiling images of coach Matt Lindell – I recognized the photo and wondered if I took it. The next day I was at Cape Henlopen State Park to cover the Pumpkin Pie 5K. The side of the Seashore Striders’ trailer read “Photos by Fredman,” but all the photos had been removed, which seemed like an angry effort. Perhaps Coach B had the blues because he never got to run in a championship girls’ race emblazoned on the socks of Cape runners. Coach Lindell is the sock puppet of Cape cross country.  

Phenom - Brynn Crandell of Indian River, a freshman first-year runner, won the Henlopen Conference Championship Nov. 28 at Killens Pond. Talent and tactics blended together, and afterward I heard the word “phenom” dropped after her name. There are many synonyms for phenom. My favorite is whiz kid. What happens next, as if now is not enough? Living up to promise is a trap, and I feel this grounded 14-year-old knows that and will continue to run for the fun of it. 

Final Friday night - Cape will play at always-mysterious Dover Friday, Dec. 4, with a chance to close out the season with a winning record. You always watch Dover on film, then see them from the sidelines, where they often resemble the New York Giants. “Dover has grown men,” said Cape coach J.D. Maull. Dover was gashed by Sussex Central 34-0, then came back and beat Caesar Rodney 27-13 with the Riders responding with a 21-13 win at Cape. The short seven-game season marks the end of the Cape career of Jaden Davis, who makes Cape’s all-time top 10 list of running backs. Knock that list down to five and Jaden is still there, cut in the mold of tackle-to-tackle inside runners Elijah Worthy, Jerome Johnson and Mitch Whitman. This is state tournament week for Cape field hockey, volleyball, soccer and cross country, while in Dover on Friday night, the mission is to lock down a winning season.

Henlopen hockey - There are just eight teams in the DIAA Division I field hockey tournament, and four of them are from the Henlopen Conference. Thursday’s first-round games, all starting at 2 p.m., feature Wilmington Charter at Cape, Appoquinimink at Dover, Polytech at Padua and Sussex Tech at Concord. They call me Mr. Field Hockey for a reason (I don’t know what I’m talking about), but I’m always picking the Henlopen team until an upstate squad proves they can roll with the downstate girls over four quarters. 

Got a shot - The Cape boys’ cross country team has a shot at a Division I team title Saturday afternoon with Salesianum right there with them. Seven runners all have to run their best, then see if that is good enough. Runners have to live on the edge of the pain barrier for 15 to 18 minutes. In team sports, if you take a rest during a game, no one notices except your grandma locked outside the chain-link fence for her own protection.  

My boys named Brad - I know two Brads from the sports scene, and I trust them both implicitly with no second-guessing. Brad Myers, covering high school sports for the News Journal, hails from Arkansas, has that Southern storytelling talent, and would be right at home hanging at the gazebo by the Broadkill across from the Milton fire hall. Trust me, if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. And Dr. Bradley Layfield, chairperson of the DIAA board of directors. Brad has always been the smartest guy at the Delaware football tailgate. His board of directors: Dave Nut Marvel, Lloyd Mears and Danny Mitchell. Layfield holds a key position, as it seems every meeting is a Temple of Doom scenario for school sports, but I trust DIAA with Layfield as chairman and Donna Polk as executive director, both Sussex Central graduates pushing hard to keep school sports going. 

Snippets - Winter sports practices have begun, already two weeks late. Don’t ask about masks and cross faces and swimming pools and rebounded dirty old basketballs. The more questions asked, the more bad answers are coming back. We have become a society where the doom-and-gloomers get too much airtime. I remain a beleaguered beluga spouting off about stuff I know little about, but at least I know that much. Go on now, git!