Just because you are right doesn’t mean you win

The future is now and now has left the building. There is no now because everything in the universe is moving in relation to everything else. “Gee thanks, Mr. Wizard.” Here is my lament and after all, it may not be all about me but without me it is all about nothing. How can athletes be on a school-sponsored team then split for tournaments and festivals in another non-school sport?

I know, what’s the sense of having a cake if you can’t eat it, too?

I know as a writer I don’t like covering a team during the season when athletes have permission to miss certain contests because the coach doesn’t want to mess with their parents.

This is the new reality of camcorder kids, and yes, it’s great that they are busy all the time but what about commitment to home school home slices?

A related version of this is the family vacation during winter or spring break. It’s the “I’ll only miss four practices but I will be surfing every day so it’s not like I won’t be in shape” argument.

I made so many concessions during my coaching career I should have sold hotdogs, but mostly they were to protect an athlete from his own self-destruction.

All-conference - There are 14 schools in the Henlopen Conference. They are Smyrna, Dover, Caesar Rodney, Milford, Lake Forest, Seaford, Woodbridge, Laurel, Delmar, Indian River, Sussex Central, Sussex Tech, Polytech and Cape Henlopen. I always thought it was a pretty cool and culturally colorful conference.

I don’t joke when I say before the advent of the GPS every set of directions I got to a field or gym included the sentence, “Turn at the liquor store,” sometimes followed by “What do you mean you don’t know where it is?”

Many sports contested as Henlopen Conference championships have only half the member schools fielding a team. And some schools field skeleton varsity teams barely covering events or weight classes so the stronger programs consider it a waste of time to play them; but hey, a win is a win - or is it?

The hardest sports to make a living from in the Henlopen Conference are football, boys’ soccer, boys’ basketball, baseball and softball. Those are sports in which a school can have a good team and barely break medium because everyone plays and plays hard. Certain successful sports at Cape I left off the list, because on the conference side of the street, there just ain’t no competition.

Right is wrong - Just because you are right in the argument that advances your position doesn’t mean you will win. The NFL players are adamant about the stupidity of playing an 18-game schedule, arguing their bodies won’t hold up and their careers will be shortened. And they are absolutely correct, but last time I checked they didn’t own franchises and worked at football an average of less than five years. And speaking of running the option, all players have the option of not playing for too much money and using their college degree, which many of them don’t have, to find alternative employment.

Imagine such a powerful union that workers toil at their trade for five years before leaving vested and pension-eligible. The fans don’t want 18 games because half the games that now run from Thursday through Monday are garbage anyway; they are just less deadly boring than reality shows. I mean, would you rather watch a cakewalk or a cake-off?

Snippets - There is a place in Salisbury called the Crown Center. Google it on your voice-activated droid. Cape girls have been playing Sunday lacrosse down there. Games are six on six and the goalie makes seven.

The action is fast with lots of goals scored. The Cape Region is in dire need of a recreation/convention center because what are people like us doing heading off to Salisbury in the middle of the night? The boys’ basketball team hosts Smyrna Tuesday night, Feb. 1, while the girls face the Eagles on the road. Both games, if not huge, are definitely really important. The Smyrna girls are 13-1 and reached the state finals last year, losing to Sanford and finishing the season 18-2. They are led by cousins Betnijah Laney and Crystal Ross, both Division One-bound talents. The Vikings have lost four straight to Smyrna and have not beaten the Eagles since Ross and Laney arrived from Philly two years ago. Cape junior Elise Matalavage sang the national anthem at the Beacon versus Mariner middle school wrestling match at Cape last Friday. The girl is a major talent; I next want to hear her sing “God Bless America” before a basketball game.