U.S field hockey team, Lingo headed to summer Olympics

BEST IN SHOW – Here’s a little pointer: Maurice Pointer is the dog you always want to bet on in a masters foot race.
The 52-year-old master runner from Maryland is the top-rated masters runner in the country in the 3,000, 5,000 and 10,000 meters on the track in the 50-54 age group. But he never ran in high school or college and picked up the sport 30 years ago as an adult. Pointer, running for the Falls Road Track Club, is so light on his feet he barely touched the ground running over puddles last Sunday to capture the Lower Delaware Autism Foundation half-marathon over Breck Venderwende of Bridgeville.
Pointer is the grandmaster flash of Maryland runners past 50. Last summer he won the masters division of the prestigious Annapolis 10-miler in 59:32, good for seventh overall.

JENNIE NOVAK - Jennie won the women’s race last Sunday morning at the Lower Delaware Autism Foundation half-marathon running a 1:28. She is originally from Fred-erick, Md., and currently is in her second year as the head track coach at Sussex Central working with tri-athlete Steve O’Boyle trying to get a program going. Jennie is a former distance star at Springfield College in Massachusetts where she ran a 10:30 for 3,000 meters. Last March 15, the 34-year-old Jennie ran the Shamrock Marathon in Virginia Beach in 3:16.

DROWNED RAT - Bob Wolhar ran over 100 races last calendar year and in 2008 he is already over 20. A following runner at last Sunday’s half marathon told me that Bob ran through every puddle during the race kicking up water like a New York taxi. By the end of the race Bob looked like an egg noodle that lost a war with a super soaker. But it’s all good - you just can’t hurt this guy.

USA HOCKEY WINS OLYMPIC QUALIFIER - Last Sunday morning by 9:30 a.m Eastern Time, interested Cape region sports fans got the word that the United States women’s field hockey team had defeated Belgium 3-1 in the finals of the qualifying tournament held in Kazan, Russia, and earned an automatic bid to the summer Olympics in Bejing. The U.S. never trailed in any game and routed three opponents in shutout Hook
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victories. The team outscored the field 27-4.

Carrie Lingo, former Cape and UNC star, is on the USA team that won the tournament. Maren Ford, another former Cape player, is on the USA developmental squad which means she is but a step and stroke away from making the Olympic team, which has not been finalized.

DON’T TRUST THIS - The 76ers went up on the Pistons two games to one in the opening round of the playoffs and led by 10 at halftime of game four. I got suckered into watching and believing in them and then slowly game four turned, step by step, and it just looked wrong and no explanation was good enough.
I

know the outcome couldn’t be fixed, but how can a team that was being worked for six straight quarters suddenly awaken and make the Sixers look like a high school squad?

SPORTS ALWAYS STAY - Throw around the term budget cuts and some school districts will always threaten to cut middle school sports. It absolutely never happens because you can talk about all the accelerated honors programs you want - we are talking sports here and sports always win.

You don’t see any national movement to build turf fields for advanced placement classes do you? No, I didn’t think so. This is not Cape doing this rumbling but another school district and what I hear from people who care about such matters is why not cut people who don’t have a teaching load and don’t require a substitute when they take a three-day fog delay?

DELIBERATION AND DECISIONS - Baseball and softball seem like easy sports to coach because most of the time the athletes are standing still. But in my mind they are the hardest because the dynamics change when you least expect change. Balls are hit and runners take off. Sometimes they take off when balls are not hit, coaches wave runners home and other times they put up the Diana Ross stop in the name of love sign.

Let’s say your team is behind and the bases are loaded with no out and you’re the adult in a kid’s uniform flashing signals that no one is trying to pilfer. The pitcher is having control problems. Do you tell the batter “swing at the first fat one” or “make him throw a strike - don’t help him?”

And there’s all the hit and run and bunt stuff, not to mention the suicide squeeze and its seldom-seen cousin the backdoor squeeze. Permitted or not permitted? Your team is on defense, you know the squeeze play is on so you move your centerfielder to the infield to play five feet up the third-base line from the catcher. And you have him wear a catcher’s mask?

SNIPPETS - ESPN draft analyst Mel Kiper never played or coached football or graduated from a four-year college. He attended Essex County Community College in Baltimore and in my opinion is a high-functioning Rainman who latches onto stats but has no idea what any of it means. His record of success over time is a few clicks above random, but he is listed as the uncle of filmmaker Quentin Tarantino on his mother’s side. My wife just explained to me that Kiper’s sister would be Tarantino’s mother if my information is correct.

Jenna Pavlik, a 158-pound senior women’s freestyle wrestler, was seventh at last weekend’s USA National Championships in Las Vegas.