THAT’S CONCUSSING - The NFL has announced new measures to take care of concussed players. What the heck is a “concussed player?”
What’s the matter, Troy?
“I can’t remember my plays or my dog’s name. I think I may be concussed, but if I am I’d be the last one to know wouldn’t I?”
There seems to be this myth that after a brain-swelling injury resulting from a collision with another head or kneecap, disorientation and short-term memory loss are classic symptoms. Actually, those are more personality traits of large people who collide with one another over a period of years in the name of sport.
Look at and listen to boxers then realize Evander Holyfield is lucid compared to most of the rest. Shoot, listen to Tyson - “I want to eat your children” - and he didn’t even get hit that much.
Some years back I was emceeing the Punkin Chunkin Championships - talk about a genetically concussed crowd - and I had to walk up a ramp into the back of a U-Haul trailer to get a new walkie-talkie redneck transmitter.
I bi-pedaled up the inclined plank as the top of my head collided with a metal lip of the trailer roof and I dropped onto the wood floor like a care package on a mountain Kurd. A fat guy sitting at a table asked, “Are you all right?”
A hard-boiled egg too tender to touch formed along the ridge of my skull.
“I’m fine, do you have any salt?”
Two days later my vision was still blurred - could have been the permafrost schnapps – so I called my doctor and was told I was past the 24-hour period of sudden death due to cranium collision, but I was right to call because a good story like that should be shared.
A concussion discussion should be part of the protocol in all athletic programs featuring contact sports and remember the worst contact and collisions occur in sports without helmets like soccer, baseball and field hockey.
FILL UP MY SENSES - Last Tuesday late afternoon, with what locals call “sheep flies” strafing my skull, I circled the old three-mile bike loop on foot hard wired into an iPOD listening to Bruce sing “The Rising” and wondering what it all meant. I am generally opposed to cell phones and headphones, and if you wear a cell phone earpiece there is a chance you are not a poser in need of attention, but the chance is slim. Walking alone we all hear voices and sometimes they are talking about us – Jesus, that’s a fat shadow.
RUNNING TALL - Throw a 6-foot-11 guy into a road race, in this case Brett Hughes, a 28-year-old former UMES center, and it’s a wonder he doesn’t succumb to motion sickness watching all the heads pitching and rolling all around him. Brett is pretty good running in the 22-minute range. He is a physical education teacher in Baltimore County and coaches middle school basketball. “I’m training and hoping to run the Baltimore Marathon on October 13,” Brett said. Michelle Benson, a 2000 Randolph Macon graduate, is Brett’s 5-foot-10 girlfriend and is a special education director in Baltimore County schools.
HAND-IN-HAND - Jack Beckett, a 1960 Lewes graduate former Indian River basketball coach and long-time referee, for some reason talked of his teammate Larry Hand at Appalachian State. Hand was a 10th-round draft choice of the Detroit Lions and in 1966 was battling for the final roster spot at defensive tackle behind Alex Karras and Roger Brown with a free agent out of Penn State named Tom Frederick. It got down to the last cut.
“That was close,” my brother said. ”I almost made the team which I never expected.”
I told Beckett that story and he about fell over.
“I never met another person who ever heard of Larry Hand,” Beckett said.
Larry Hand had a 13-year NFL career at defensive tackle and he was a little guy at 6-foot-3 and 270 pounds.
SNIPPETS- The Gold All Star football team moved its midweek scrimmage south of the canal a few years ago to increase interest downstate. It is a great idea that sort of isn’t working because I don’t see the people you would expect to see like head coaches and staffs and a school administrator or two. Even the annoying media seems tepid on the event, so what is up? I did see Cape coach Dave McDowell and Polytech’s Ron Allen and the team is coached by Mike Tkach of Milford with Carlton Brown of Dover and Laurel’s Ed Manlove on his staff.
Every time I put a reporter's notebook in my pocket I tell my wife, ”Big Loser Boy is off on another assignment.” But I’m glad I’m a sportswriter otherwise I may not be out there, but at home mulching a flower bed.
And so the word is that Amanda Jacona, Cape’s used-to-be hockey coach, has been hired by Milford as a health and physical education teacher. Amanda will serve as an assistant coach this season before taking over as head coach the following year.
Coach Kathleen “K.K.” Fluharty, former Northwestern field hockey and lacrosse All-American, will be running her youth lacrosse camp July 9-13, from 9-11 a.m. each day for girls in grades 2-5, and 9 a.m. to noon for grades 5-8. The camp is at Rehoboth Elementary School. Contact Coach KK at 745-5676 or email her at coachkk@aol.com for more information on camps and small-group lessons. There are field hockey camps later in July.
My grandfather Frank was the first Big Poppy and he carried ballast with him because in the event of illness he could throw a part of himself overboard. Rugged and robust was my Big Poppy, so what is up with this millennium trend of undernourished old guys? I ain’t playing! Someone hands me a burger. Cabbage Head is going to eat that mamma jamma!
