Lax legend Paul Rabil has small camera clamped on his head
Right field freaky - Hunter Pence of the Giants and Jayson Werth of the Nationals both played right field in Philadelphia and are both still playing at a high level, and the Phillies have pretty much nothing to show for it. “Sorry for your loss, Ruben.” Werth is a sullen freakazoid and he’s the only athlete in sports who gets on my nerves just looking at him. How much hair is just too much hair? I look at Werth and I see the Last Supper painting hanging in Grand Mom Rose’s dining room. Pence was clean as a quail (spell check joke) when he left Philly; now he looks like a bad guy in a spaghetti western. I wonder if both of them are suffering from Post Traumatic Philly Syndrome.
Personal trainer - The fitter the trainer, the less likely a client can ever look like them. I was thinking of a personal training business where all the trainers are overweight (known in some circles as just really fat) with a body mass index of 40 and above. Some great coaches have crossed the Wawa make your own hoagie bridge, but it has zero effect on whether the athletes become great players. Who wants to follow perfection person to the quad extension machine then listen to them count to 10? I am joking, but there are some fat grams of truth to what I’m saying.
The beaten beach - Traveling off the beaten path used to mean blazing new territory, bushwhacking through the thicket. Lewes and Rehoboth used to change dramatically after Labor Day but not so much anymore as shoulder seasons have become year-round, and why not? I know birdshot will be raining on my roof Sept. 1, the first day of quail season, and somehow the sound of shotguns on a September morning I find comforting like migrating Canada geese. But the routes to the Delaware beaches are programmed into a million smartphones; “we” have been discovered and for sports it's mostly good as clinics, camps and tournaments come to us. Reminds me of the words of a local when I first came to Lewes in 1975, “We are 100 miles from everywhere - Baltimore, Washington and Philadelphia - but no one ever goes anywhere. Heck, real locals don’t even go to the beach.”
Events management - Competitive sports from middle school through high school, college and professional ranks have started back up like a loyal lawn mower, cutting a wide swath through road races and triathlons. Fall is prime season for marathons and iron man competitions and ultra races, and those mud run events are still hanging around. Two end-of-summer races this weekend: Saturday, Aug. 30, is the Seashore Striders Last Blast Prediction Run at Grove Park. Sunday, Aug. 31, is the Summer's End Run at Jimmy’s Grille in Dewey. But the racing scene is all about "endless summer.” Sept. 6 is the 38th annual Bottle & Cork 10 Miler and 5K, which used to be 13 miles until everyone got ADD. The Dewey Beach Sprint Triathlon is Sept. 13 staged at Tower Road - a half-mile ocean swim, 16-mile bike and 3.5-mile run. It draws about 800 participants including relay teams. There are still spots available; check out packet pickup at the Rehoboth Y from 3 to 8:30 p.m., Friday, Aug. 29.
Snippets - The best lacrosse player on the planet, Paul Rabil, was at Beacon Academy last week as part of the Sliders Youth Lacrosse Clinic for kids shy of middle school. Rabil is married to Kelly Berger, a three-time all-American at James Madison and member of the U.S. National Team. Kelly and her brother Stephen, a three-time all-American at Washington College, were lead camp clinicians. Rabil, on crutches, was beastly fit; he looked like a genetically engineered midfielder. And he had this little camera and videoed everything that came at him and moved away. I had never seen a camera on the end of a stick before, but it makes sense in the selfie world that makes big camera sports guy obsolete.
Lynchburg College field hockey is at Wesley at 2 p.m., Saturday, Aug. 30. Lynchburg is deep with Henlopen Conference players including Karissa Lemaire from Cape; Taylor Quillen, Hannah Krause and Kayla Krause of Sussex Tech; Alyssa Mills of Milford; and Courtney Gilette of Caesar Rodney. Wesley will feature Devin Price, a former Cape player. If you travel to Dover on Saturday afternoon of Labor Day weekend to watch field hockey and are not related to any of the players, you are a real fan. Go on now, git!
