A SENSE OF SADNESS - Susan Frederick will walk out of Cape next week and join the team of teachers who ran the race and were still standing tall after 30 years on the front lines. But in our double-pension household there is no sense of gaiety or load lifted from the shoulders. Next school year will be the first since 1975 that a Frederick hasn’t taught in the high school. And most of those years both of us were there. Students love Miz Fred and they liked me all right as well, because we are smart people who never needed to prove it at the expense of high school students. Both of us always thought it was a great privilege and we were lucky to have known and connected with so many of the community’s young people.
All four of our kids requested and had us as teachers. I told one of the twins, “You don’t have to have your dad for a teacher” and he said, “It’s better than having one of those other dorks.”
That comment remains the nicest thing he has ever said to me. Susan and I remain champions of Cape kids and we’ll be doing nothing else if not missing them every day.
GUTSY CALL – I was a head football coach in the fall of 1974 at the Mitchell School in Haverford, Pa. We drove and scored a touchdown with 30 seconds left in the game to trail 7-6 against George School. I had an Italian-speaking, straight-on kicker whom I didn’t trust so I sent the offense on the field. Nick Carlino, the kicker’s immigrant father, began to shake a tree and said in Italian that he was going to kill me. I called a blast right to Cubby, the 220-pound tailback. Then I told Eddie “Heart Attack,” the quarterback, to keep the ball and for left wide-out Arthur to run a post flag. Fakes run the best when you lie to your own team. Heart pulled the pull away from Cubby’s stomach. Arthur came cleanly wide open and Heart hit him with a perfect spiral for the pass as we won 8-6.
Athletic director Tom Peach ran up to me, made a big circle with his arms and said something about “Big Cojones.”
I give Cape Principal John Yore the same accolade for having the courage to make “the outside” call on Cape graduation last Tuesday night because if that unsettled sky had come loose in the middle of the proceedings John-boy’s head would have been on the chop block of community criticism.
BLUE-GOLD RACE - The June 16 Blue-Gold 5K will embark from the parking lot at Irish Eyes in Lewes at 8 a.m.. The steel drum band will be there along with lots of folding chairs and Tom and Charlene Jones. You can also preregister on Friday evening (June 8) from 6 to 8:30 p.m.or register online at the websites active.com or blue-gold.org/run/. You can’t beat a race starting at the bar that used to be there and will soon be there again. The race benefits DFRC - the volunteer juice behind the Blue-Gold All-Star football game and hand-in-hand buddy program.
Last month Tony Glenn of the DFRC presented the Lower Delaware Autism Foundation with a check for $5,000 for partial support of the adaptive bike program. Southern Delaware Physical Therapy has thrown enormous support behind this fundraising effort and will be there kneading hamstrings whether you need it or not.
DUMBED DOWN SPORTS - The 20th anniversary of sports talk radio has just passed and, according to experts - and everyone who talks sports is an expert - it is here to stay. And it is rude, crude, stupid and unimaginative. And no one can write anymore - just compare a Sports Illustrated piece today with one from the 1970s. The writers from that earlier period were literate and educated, and the pieces they wrote were pages long and you needed an education to stay with the story line, but you don’t anymore.
I am currently reading the biography of Albert Einstein and do you know why? To make me a better writer because that’s how education works. I hold myself to a higher standard than the moronic and ignorant sports talk put out by WIP radio out of Philly. Trust me, people don’t care that much about the Eagles in any real sense - they’re just addicted to talking and not writing about them.
RAVENS NEST - A bird made a nest inside my Ravens helmet. Every day it flew in and out of the garage through the dog pen suite. I even took a picture and sent it to the Ravens media department.
One day last week two chicks appeared and it was so cute, but it had the potential to get weird in a shared habitat sort of way. The next day the chicks were dead, their remnants strewn about near the Purina bag thus implicating bent spine Raven, the psycho Siamese. Hatched in a Ravens Helmet, you fly out and are eaten by a cat named Raven? What is the chance of that happening?
According to Einstein’s infinity theory there was no chance of that happening except for the one time that it did happen. Nature ain’t no joke, yo!
COACHING GRANDFATHERS - Last Wednesday night at the Rehoboth Bandstand as the First State Force Band was playing waiting for the police motorcycles that would escort the Olympic torch out of Rehoboth on it’s journey towards The University of Delaware, I took a picture of 1-year-old Emma in her pink Yankee’s cap and told her I hoped her team could came back to win a wild card. I was then told that I had coached Emma’s grandfather, Jay Reed, when he was a state champion miler for Cape in the spring of 1976. Jay was also a state cross country champion, but actually I think I’ve coached a lot of grandfathers which is all the way whack from my perspective.
SNIPPETS - The Phillies beat the Mets twice as of Thursday morning pulling to a game over .500. But to get into the wild card race it will take at least 10 over .500, but probably more like 15. The Phils are a fun team to watch and I know lots of locals who are avid fans.
Don’t forget the Captain Speed parasail Flight for Life fundraiser is June 15. Call the Lighthouse Restaurant 645-6271 for all the details.
