Sunday morning sea of sports diversity is better than church

Let’s get fired up - I love my diversified life, nestled inside my diversified country, and all opportunities I have lost have been my fault because of mismanagement or wasting away in Slackerville. Horrific events like the mass shooting in Orlando, which came to light on a Sunday morning, sicken Americans because we move about getting along and enjoying each other in our open society, but some of the craziness forces us into avoidable discussions and issues. I was photographing a road race Sunday morning at Made Ya Look Salon and Spa located along the Forgotten Mile in Rehoboth/Dewey with proceeds going to Delaware Hospice. It was filled with people of all hues of color, ages, lifestyles and belief systems. It’s better than church until I see one that has that level of diversity under the same roof.   

Mr. Field Hockey - The Cape sports of field hockey and girls’ lacrosse with a combined 13 state titles since 2009 have been extra special to me because of having granddaughters scattered about on each team. Other families, like the Judges, Vosses, Yeagers, Coveleskis have contributed multiple two-sport athletes, but they don’t have their own column. Coach P.J. Kesmodel jokingly calls me Mr. Field Hockey once lacrosse season is over. He knows I’m already looking at the schedule and roster. Cape lost some great seniors off last year’s team and has some reloading and reconfiguring to do. The month of September is loaded with formidable foes on the schedule, including Dover, a surging program and state tournament team; Severna Park, the Maryland state champion; and Delmar, a state finalist four of the last five years. And Maryland powerhouse Archbishop Spalding was added to the lineup as an away game Thursday, Oct. 6 (Who thought that was a good idea?). Field hockey can be a deadly boring game when teams are mismatched (so can NBA finals), but when two top-shelf teams go at each other where every hit and possession matter, it is just the best.

Personal hygiene - Summer is the season of weekend tournaments and nasty porta-potties and water fountains (what’s a water fountain?). When you travel and play all day, you bring your nasty body with you, which is partly an attractive container of biological byproducts and super bacteria that can wipe out an entire continent. Sunday morning I saw a runner behind the open trunk of his car brushing his teeth like he was sanding a boat trailer. That was followed by a gigantic swig of bottled water which he sloshed around before spitting it on the pavement. He then topped that off by applying deodorant under his arms, all before racing a 5K on an 85-degree day. Sometimes after a grueling event I’ll congratulate an athlete I’ve known for a long time and they often warn, “Don’t touch me, I’m all sweaty and just so gross.” I honestly never cared; I honestly never carried Colgate and Right Guard to an athletic event.

Facial recognition software - I was sitting in my car outside Wawa Sunday morning wondering “Why do hash browns stick to the bag?” when I noticed a fit, middle-aged black man carrying coffee; he came out the door and moved like an athlete. He got into a car with Virginia plates. My brain slowly processed the face I had last seen 40 years earlier and I burst out aloud, “That was freaking Charles Turner!” Turner was a 6-foot-10-inch high jumper, a 47-foot triple jumper and state champion wrestler who went through a season pinning everyone but one. One of Cape’s all-time greatest. I decided to be the old coach in the parking lot guy, but before I could finish my hash browns Charlie was gone. Wawa is its own Hall of Fame; everybody is somebody. 

Halls of fame - The sports landscape is littered with halls of fame, but a contrasting reality is a disinterest in sports histories, even by people whose job it is to keep them going. I recently requested and received a digital photo of an Auburn softball player and mentioned in my email that I was of grandfather vintage and once impersonated Tucker Frederickson while wearing a New York Giants team shirt at a party. The Sports Information Skippy responded, “Here’s the photo, but I don’t know what you’re rambling about.” Tucker Frederickson was a two-way Auburn football player, runner-up in Heisman voting and the first pick in the 1965 NFL draft. He’s in the College Football Hall of Fame. Rambling is a term thrown back at old guys who know too much and talk too much and go beyond simple sentence construction, but I’m rambling again.  

Snippets - A sports reality is there is no longer an off-season for young athletes. Everyone is playing something all the time, hard to say if it’s bad or good, it just is what it is. But as Grand Mom Rose observed, “What if it is what it isn’t?” Go on now, git!