It's called the athletic intelligence quotient

TRIGGER PERSON - Basketball has point guards while lacrosse and soccer have that all-purpose midfielder who runs with a head on a swivel and makes everyone around a better player.

I don’t see many of those “make you better makes me better” types of athletes on the scholastic sports scene. And I can only conclude that unselfishness is not an attribute held in high regard and coaches don’t emphasize “it ain’t about you” like they did back in the day.

Fast breaks in basketball used to generate a lot of three on two action, with the player in the middle controlling the ball. Coaches still practice those drills, but you don’t see a three on two completed fast break all season. Now everything is two on one because, deeper than that, players know they aren’t getting the ball anyway and the guy with the ball is most likely not giving it up. Great players just see it, they anticipate the next frame, it’s called the athletic intelligence quotient.

THE PASS - THE FINISH - It was a Cape lacrosse semifinal and Cape had come back to tie favored Caesar Rodney. Seconds remained and the ball was down deep on the left to All-American Steve Welsh. The game was on his stick. But as if by instinct Welsh, who was part of a clockwork attack that included Steve Conlon and Joey Cahill, gave the ball to Rich Benson.

Rich Benson? Benson was a finisher! Put the ball in his pocket and into the back of the net it will go also by instinct. Welsh gave it up and Benson one-timed it sending Cape to the finals and a state championship. I asked Steve Welsh after the game, “What is wrong with you? You are the man. You don’t see Jordan giving up the game winner! Great players want the outcome in their hands; they are not trusting anyone else.”

Steve just smiled and said, “Rich had a better shot.” That’s what I’m talking about! The great ones make everyone better!

SNEAK ATTACK - Cape track’s long-legged sprinter and jumper Hiram Carter (1977) was on the track working on starts at 10 a.m. getting ready for Dover’s Mike Meade who was coming with the Senators that afternoon.

“I can get him if I get out of the blocks quickly,” Carter said to me, his coach, as we both enjoyed not being in a classroom. ‘

“So can I,” I joked. “If by quickly you mean I get to start before he gets here.”

Carter, better known as “Humpty,” got a great start so good he got a second shot false starting him out of the race. The race was restarted and sophomore Garrison Duncan, not looking like a sprinter running with his feet pointed outwards, blew away the field including Meade. I had heard rumors Garrison was that fast, but he just would never crank it out and turn it loose in practice. Fast people are like that being slow except when 1-800-FAST rings in their brain. When 227-FAST rings for me it simply means Grotto’s with extra cheese.

DEFENSE - I admire athletes in lacrosse and soccer who are defensive specialists, but I don’t know how you ever sell an athlete on the idea that never touching the ball except to clear it from your own goal is a good idea. Most defensive players in basketball loaf because of the ADD thing, and it takes a real personal and emotional commitment to shut down another player.

The great ones will D you up in a pickup game and I know what you’re thinking - what’s a pickup game? Two new outdoor courts are part of the master plan at Cape Henlopen High School so upperclassmen have something to do during DSTP testing.

HIPPO OATH - I am sworn not to divulge any personal medical information I encounter on my sports beat, but I don’t have any privileged information, I just mostly know what the rest of you know. Cape quarterback Max Coveleski survived a run and gun football season unscathed only to be whacked in the back by a line drive the first day of baseball practice.

No, I don’t know why his back was turned at the time or how many liners were airborne. I just know a spleen story circulated along with a intensive care hospital food story.

Now, after days in the “I see you,” Max and his spleen are back among us but baseball is out this spring and so is the Blue Gold All-Star game. My wife, who has a part-time job writing college recommendation letters for Max, explained to me that the spleen is a redundant organ quickly ordering me, “No jokes!”

APPENDAGE ASSEMBLAGE – My “bad back” is now thought to be a bad hip, so says Dr. Ron Sabbagh - “The Back Guy.” The intake/outtake desk woman at Orthopaedic Associates Of Southern Delaware asked me, “Have you ever seen Dr. Choy before?”

I told her, “I once saw him twisting the leg off a barbequed chicken at the IGA,” but my jokes were ignored as I limped to my “real guy” pickup truck.

My brother Tom, 6-foot-6 and 390 pounds, had hip replacement surgery and said it was worth it just to hear the surgeon say, “I’ve operated on a lot of people fatter than you.”

“I have lunch once a week with a group of retired teachers,” Tom told me last Sunday night. “There are seven hip guys, 11 knee guys and five shoulders and some like me get counted more than once in different categories. And there are always people on the waiting list.”

The land of lost cartilage awaits all athletes from football guys to road runners this is just no country for creaky old men.

SNIPPETS - My 3-year-old grandson Mikey is so coordinated he can run around the house without touching the floor just hurling himself from the arms of sofas to swivel stools and running atop big circus balls and riding an indoor tricycle through your legs when you’re not paying attention. He needs a golf club and a free membership to Rehoboth and Kings Creek.

There is old footage of 4-year-old Tiger Woods hitting a golf ball on the Ed Sullivan show.

Atlantic Lacrosse teaches 4-year-olds - they call them scoopers. Why not “Attack of the Little Linksters?”