SCHOLASTIC SUMO - Ken Chertow was a 1988 U.S Olympic team wrestler and a three-time NCAA All-American when he wrestled at Penn State. Chertow was at Cape Henlopen last Sunday night conducting a clinic for about 30 Sussex County wrestlers.
Ken and his family vacation in Rehoboth Beach every August. I heard him mention beach wrestling to the athletes, so being the veteran “jock who writes,” as Chertow quickly sized me up, I inquired if beach wrestling had anything to do with the actual beach. “It’s a combination of scholastic and sumo,” Chertow said. “It takes place inside a ring, usually configured with police crime scene tape or rope, and the objective is to score points by takedowns or getting the other person outside of the ring.”
There is a beach wrestling tournament in Long Beach, N.J. on Saturday, Sept. 1, the parents of Nick Bennett, 11, from Seaford informed me, so I assume that’s where they will spend their Labor Day.
BEFORE HEAD GEAR - Two men walked into a West Chester college bar and the guy with me had cauliflower ears and a head shaped like a steel fist. It was crowded as we made our way through a mob being polite and saying excuse me. A big guy stopped my smallish friend grabbing his shoulder and demanding he apologize to his girlfriend for stepping in front of her.
“Sorry,” said my friend, a 145-pound wrestling animal who had lost in the NCAA finals.
The guy said, ”I don’t think I heard that - say it louder.”
At this point I was getting extremely happy so I gave this clueless bonehead some valuable advice.
“Check out the ears before proceeding at little risk to anyone but you.”
I don’t know how Paul got that big guy mounted and tied around the horns of a hanging moose head, but it only took seconds. I think scholastic sumo may be a life skill and schools by the beach should use it for conflict resolution and what Cape calls the collaborative approach to problem solving, but only for adults who are just “so done talking.”
INNER CITY RUGBY - Rugby is a sport played around the world, and I know that after writing a story on a touring team from Zimbabwe playing in the Atlantic Cup. The team was racially mixed and their best player was a dark-skinned 6-foot-3, 230-pound African and after the game when I asked him his name he said in a clear British accent, ”My name is Gordon.” I don’t know what I expected, but I didn’t expect dark-skinned, English-accented Gordon.
Last Sunday I saw three young African-American athletes watching the Washington Old Boys battle the Wilmington Old Boys. I took their picture and asked them if they knew why and they indicated they probably did and so commenced the line of questioning. The Washington Youth Rugby association had about 50 members from inner-city Washington D.C. Marcus Wood, 32, played at Archbishop Carroll High School and James Madison. He learned the sport from Robert “Bo” Neusome who was playing in the Old Boys game.
“We started an under-14 club back in 2004,” Wood said. “A 15-minute documentary was made about us just because it’s not the typical sport played by black kids from the inner city. There is always redemption on the field and great camaraderie after the games,” Woods added.
DROPPED LIKE BAD HABIT - Four women rugby teams were at the Atlantic Cup rugby tournament last weekend. From a field away I saw a tall and graceful back accept a lateral, sidestep a few would-be tackles and then gracefully gallop for the end zone.
But not so fast! A Maryland Exile appeared like a parade ground deer from the deep woods and dropped that Severn Renegade like a care package with no parachute. I haven’t seen a tackle that perfect in 10 years of NFL football.
I watched the women play and I forgot they were women, which is probably not a good thing. But, seriously, the game was the same and so was the crazy contact that ruggers relish. I concluded that women’s sports with all the constricting rules to protect girls needs to back off because girls just want to have fun just like boys.
SNIPPETS - “Bunchers” are people who steal dogs and sell them mostly at flea markets for $10 to $20 a dog to human dirtbags who kennel them inhumanly before selling them to research laboratories providing they don’t shoot the dogs for sport in the interim.
I watched a documentary at 4 a.m. filmed by an undercover, 25-year-old Arkansas man not because I couldn’t sleep, but rather I can sleep whenever I want. I think Michael Vick has done more to help the cause of dogs than all the damage thug lifers and creepy crackers have done over the last decade.
There is just no way Vick will play another down in the NFL. Hanging, drowning and electrocuting wet dogs? If I was a player and he came to my team I would walk out and if I had to stay out then so be it.
Please, no more weather bunnies reporting from the sixth floor of a Jamaican inland hotel during a category 4 storm.
Go down to the beach and get in the water and watch your career take off and we will watch it too on high definition.
Go on now, git!
