Elephant towers over the herd at Jungle Jim’s 5K

Billy and Uncle Bill - Young Billy Lingo, all-state attack on Cape’s lacrosse state championship team in 1998, was recently in the hospital for some exotic illness. I spoke to Bill from his golf cart before the Jungle Jim’s 5K June 22. “In the days when I was all doped up from meds, I bought a $2,500 gorilla. That’s him in the back of the old pick-up in the high grass,” Billy said. “I checked with Uncle Bill and he said, “yes, by all means, get it.” As 250 runners left Jungle Jim’s waterpark with the giant grey elephant towering over the herd, I thought of the relevance of elephants. After all, there is one in every room.

Bracket busters - The opposite of everyone getting a trophy is everyone who plays a sport eventually gets a beat down. The easiest way to stop something that shouldn’t be happening to kids through sports is for the adults to step outside themselves and shout “stop it! You win the prize! C’mon kids, let’s all go to the Dairy Queen!” Fred Pop had blood in the game on both sides of that unbalanced equation last weekend. On Friday, granddaughter Lina, a rising seventh-grader was on the 2025 ESLC Pirates team that was placed in the toughest of three brackets and got housed four times, losing games by a combined score of 66-5. My son Jack, the all-time leader in penalty minutes when he played for Cape, is an assistant for the 2025s and he had to endure that enthusiastic onslaught without trucking any exuberant and overzealous coach who was ringing up goals like a Sunday morning church bell. On Saturday, I was at the Westtown School watching grandson Mikey and Cape buddy Hank D’Ambrogi play for the Roughriders Elite 2022 team out of Philly in the Boys’ Summer Slam Tournament. The Roughriders beat Prospect Lacrosse out of Colorado 16-0 in the first game. Mikey had a hat trick and I was fat cat happy, like Felix on a sunporch. Summertime sports sometimes turn in on itself demoralizing one team while overinflating the other. Not sure what to do other than endure and move on to the next game without carrying any baggage. 

Down the road - Turn right off Route 202, just short of the town of West Chester, and drive across undulating two-lane roadways with gentle bends into the countryside. It’s topography beautiful. All houses are in harmony. It is Chester County at its finest. You will come to a stop sign. Look straight ahead, “Cheyney University.” Turn left and two miles up the road is the Westtown School, a place so gorgeous it makes St. Andrew’s look ghetto. It costs $60,000 for tuition and residence for a student to attend Westtown, a Quaker School. Cheyney University is on hard times, from accreditation and student enrollment to its athletics program. An anthropology professor at West Chester told me 50 years ago, “There’s a system of elitism and privilege in this country, all melding into the Ivy League, and you’ll never be a part of it, my lower middle class, athletic, funny man. The best you can hope for is to achieve pet status like a golden retriever or foxhound.” He was right. That game is still afoot, and I’m the basset on the back porch of what’s happening now.

Free falling - I’m hearing Tom Petty’s “Free Falling” every time I read the word Phillies. They have gone from leading the division by 3 ½ games to 6 ½ behind. Morose millionaires populate the lineup and a manager who walks and talks like an android. Bryce Harper I like because he plays the game hard and he’s just like me – I can’t hit either. And pitching is the zone where precision meets a bad attitude. You have to know how to pitch, look at Max Scherzer of the Nationals and his recent broken nose gem against the Phillies.

Lift or leverage - Wrestlers are a uniquely freaky, athletic bunch and the eye test often fails, meaning the strongest looking grappler doesn’t always win. There are just too many other factors, from leverage to quickness. Having said that, I still think lifting is key. You can’t have enough strength when someone is trying to put you in a cement mixer or sink the cradle on your dumb self or repeatedly tilt you like Tommy the pinball wizard.     

Snippets - Ce'yra Middleton and Mackenzie Parker recently graduated from Cape and are the winners of Bill Degnan Faith in Human Spirit Award, which comes with a $500 scholarship. Both girls threw the shot and discus for Cape over their four years of high school. Ce’yra is going to Bowie State, while Mackenzie will attend Cabrini College. Coach Bill, who passed away 24 years ago, would have loved them both. Athletes, throwers are just Bill’s kind of people. He could coach that event like no one else. Dave Landis has been running Seashore Striders events for the last 30 years, maybe in the same shirt? On Sunday at the Bill Degnan 5K, Dave ran his consecutive days running streak to 2,000 straight, but at least he is on his feet all day in the restaurant business. Go on now, git!