TOYS FOR SHOTS - RATHER TOTS - Perhaps a bad joke, but “lighten up” with your Jenny Craig self. Saturday night, Dec. 15, Big Mike’s in Dewey with number 58 Rob Hahn, former Cape offensive lineman as your bartender, will be featuring a $10 cover - cash or toy from your toy box - so grow up, dog, and let the Tonka ‘dozer go! Toys will be collected by a Marine in uniform; there will be drink specials and live music by Crooked Finger out of Seaford. Big Mike’s is right next to Dewey Surf and Sport. Even if you don’t drink you can still bring a toy, talk Delaware football, and have a good time. Well, two out of three ain’t bad.
I DON’T NOTICE - Someone recently asked me if I ever walked into a high school basketball game and counted the number of white people in the stands. “Why are there white people at these games?” I asked. I remember a semi-final game at Del State - Sallies versus Seaford - when the Blue Jays had “Bop,” a point guard heading to Villanova before he signed a professional baseball contract. During lay-up drills, every Sallies basket was followed by a student chant “white boy-white boy”; back then it was just funny but today every comment is hypersensitive political. Bottom line is I’m glad I’m inside a multi-cultural lifestyle because everything the same is just flat-out boring. This is a great season for high school basketball in the Henlopen Conference and you can go watch the game or count people for whatever reason you want; it’s a free country.
PRESTON GRACE - Preston is the head boys basketball coach of the Woodbridge Blue Raiders middle school team. He serves as a sort of one-on-one crisis counselor at the school during the day. “The Bridge” has a scary amount of big and athletic talent and last Monday at Beacon it was a bit of a mismatch against a younger and smaller Beacon team. Coach Grace did a masterful job of letting his kids play at full throttle using different combinations, but no full-court pressing and absolutely no disrespecting, jawing or, if you like old school, selling wolf tickets. “I told the kids ESPN is not covering this game and there is never a reason to try to run up a score,” Grace said after the game. The Woodbridge girls came back in the second half to defeat a cold-shooting Beacon team 26 to 20 then stormed the court in wild jubilation. “They don’t win many games,” Coach Grace said looking on with a smile. “This is like a state championship for them.”
STOMPING ON EDGAR - Edgar Johnson is the athletic director at the University of Delaware and he is a great guy and a nice man. Over the last week Edgar has been in the crosshairs of all football fans who have lesser jobs, for sure, but would know better than to request only 3,000 tickets for a national championship game in Chattanooga. “I mean he could have asked for 7,000 and sent tickets back,” is what I keep hearing from people who really don’t want to go to Chattanooga; they just say they do because if you want to get into a game there are always scalpers on the streets and single tickets that greedy fans don’t have the enthusiasm to scalp so they give them away. Anyway, leave Edgar alone and concentrate on your own dumb job!
PRESIDENT’S CUP - Jen Harpel of Lewes is nationally known in the sport of women’s lacrosse while locally she has helped coach at Cape and she occasionally officiates high school games. Last week Jen was honored by the Intercollegiate Women’s Lacrosse Coaches’ Association, receiving the President’s Cup for distinguished service. The IWLCA Honors Banquet was presented by STX during the IWLCA Annual Convention at the Hilton Hotel in Clearwater Beach, FL.
WHERE’S MAX? - Max Coveleski had the single-most productive season at quarterback in the history of the school going back 38 years. Max threw for 21 touchdowns and ran for two more, had 670 yards rushing and 2,200 yards passing. And the All State team comes out three teams deep and Max doesn’t even make the page? Perhaps it was the 4 and 6 team record which makes his numbers all the more remarkable. I sat at a meeting of mostly coaches and said “Max Coveleski” figuring ‘Honorable Mention’ but I was told the reason there were three teams was to eliminate Honorable Mention. My point was that if I mentioned Max honorably he should then be Honorable Mention but it wasn’t a class in linguistics so my “what’s your point?” was dismissed. And so the most productive quarterback in the 38-year history of Cape football can’t make the page in little Delaware. Dom Thomas - and I can’t remember another Cape receiver close to his numbers except perhaps Bill Gibbs ‘86-’87 - made the third team with close to 1,000 yards with ten touchdowns and a few special returns on special teams. Zack Wood was selected as a third-team defensive back, which proved he impressed a lot of people. The Henlopen Conference had 22 representatives out of 75 slots on the first three teams including specialists.
SNIPPETS - The Cape football banquet will be this Sunday at 7 p.m. in the high school cafeteria. No wonder the crowd was so unresponsive when I emceed the event last Wednesday. I thought I just wasn’t funny. . . . If you’re not a Delaware Blue Hen football fan, make sure to watch the National Championship game Friday night on ESPN because if Delaware wins you will be overwhelmed with images of that helmet and how Delaware is better than Michigan and Notre Dame and you’ll need real data to defend yourself. . . . Go Temple! I was on the kickoff receiving team for Temple versus Delaware in 1965 when a short kick was picked up by our tackle Bill Billingsly, who rumbled then fumbled and dejectedly waddled to the bench where the backfield coach called him a “fat pig” and I jumped to Bill’s defense, “That’s why they call it a pigskin, Coach.” Those were the days when men were men and fat pigs were fat pigs.
