Perhaps football officials do too good of a job

Enhanced by penalties - You have never read, “It may have been a slow game but at least there were lots of penalties.” Usually the action phrase, which brings back the action you thought just happened is “marred by penalty flags” and there is a nationwide “recall attitude” from fans from high school to the pros to have officials eat more flags instead of hot dogs. Sussex Tech at Cape Friday night was a flag fest. It started with a pair of 15s against the Cape defense, three post-touchdown penalties that required conferencing and a slew of holding flags all called by the same guy. The official in the white hat wields absolute power to rule and overrule or to call a guy aside and say, “enough already, quit looking for stuff!” I’m not saying officials don’t do a good job, but maybe too good ends up being too bad.   

Balls in the air - A rare Sunday without a race to cover or some other athletic event, so I was in my home office “writing stories” with the 22-inch TV tuned to the Redzone Channel just left of my iMac, which is running multiple “live stat” windows, including the Eagles game, Franklin and Marshall field hockey at the Babson Beavers in the Elite 8 of the NCAA Division III Field Hockey Tournament (Erin Coverdale is Cape the connection), Kenyon College at Lynchburg in the Men’s Division III soccer tournament (Jack Ashby the connection) and Delaware field hockey playing top-ranked Duke in the quarterfinals of the Division I NCAA field hockey tournament. F & M lost 1-0 on a goal at 63:14 of a 70-minute game to finish the season 16-5. Lynchburg lost to the Kenyon Lords 2-1 in overtime. The Hornets finished 17-2-4. The shocker was Delaware coming back for 2-0 with under nine minutes to play to tie the game and sending it into overtime. Greta Nauck from Germany scored three minutes into overtime on a breakaway to send the Hens (21-2) to the Final Four for the first time since 1982. Delaware will play Princeton (12-7) at 4:45 p.m., Friday, Nov. 18 at Old Dominion. The other bracket features North Carolina vs UConn. The National Championship game is Sunday, Nov. 20, at 1 p.m. Maggie Delp (Cape) is healthy and ready to rock, as she played in the big win over Duke. Jacki Coveleski is a graduate assistant for the Blue Hens. Former Cape-connected Blue Hen field hockey players also include Patti Fichter, Amanda Warrington, Nikki Rhodes, Rebecca Pepper and Hannah Pepper. Former player Adele Mears won a D1 National Championship at Old Dominion, while Robin Adair and Donna Peck were on a D3 title team at Salisbury. Oh, almost forgot, the Eagles (5-4) beat the Falcons 24-15 behind 109-yards rushing by Ryan Mathews.   

Keep doing what you’re doing - You can’t get lag bolted and counter sunk by heavy plaque onto the wall of Legends Stadium one week then not show up to take Senior Night football photos the next. But Dan Cook forgot the early start and no one told me about it, just like the head track job I got in 1976 that I never applied for. “Down here,” where we come from, it’s just assumed you do stuff, you don’t get a medal but maybe a plaque if you show up for 40 years. I am the anti-planner personality and wasn’t prepared for 13 seniors and their families walking out of the darkness. But I got their photos before the game, during the game and after the game, then heading to Tower Hill the next afternoon for field hockey, which was easier than just not showing up and explaining my whereabouts. Do you know where your grandfather is?   

Bob Dylan - ”It takes a fool to laugh, it takes a train to cry.” Give him the Nobel Prize for literature just for that line. Cape hockey won 100 in a row against Delaware opponents and five straight state championships before losing at Tower Hill Saturday 2-0. I thought, “It is easier to win 100 than to lose 1.” But at that moment as I looked into the souls of the young athletes, real tears all the way to the back of their eyeballs, it required a lonesome train whistle and the rumbling sound of a freight train, loud then growing faint. Play sports, that is what you’re signing up for. There is a heartlessness behind all championships - every team but one goes home thinking they left something on the track.

Snippets - The Delaware Track and Field Hall of Fame banquet is Tuesday, Nov. 22 at Catcher’s Country Club in Christiana. Any of my crew who wants to go, I got your ticket covered - I’m not desperate, just flush with chump change. But if you skipped practices, no reason to make the banquet 30 years later. Go on now, git!