Cape waited for the court last Saturday night as the tall and pony-tailed Ursuline Red Raider volleyball team warmed up in black shirts taking soft passes from junior varsity players then sent home screaming kill shots. The purpose of the drill was not intimidation, but it certainly gets the attention of the opponent.
But the game started and it wasn’t so much about kill shots and being overmatched, but rather unforced errors on both sides of the net - just more for Cape.
“The speed of the shots and getting in position to deal with that is what the game is about,” said senior Natalie Dewitt.
Three Henlopen Conference teams didn’t win a game in the first round and are gone. Ursuline has won the state title five of the last six years. No public school has broken through since the Newark team of 1990. Ursuline beat the Charter Force coached by David Stover who won state titles while at St. Mark’s in 1995 and 1996 in straight games.
HOCKEY QUEST BEGINS - The Cape field hockey team (15-1) will host Delmar late Thursday (Nov. 6) and, if victorious, will welcome the winner of the Middletown versus William Penn game on Saturday, Nov. 8, at Legends field. Game one is obviously the most important and Delmar, coached by Linda Budd, has been there every year and, just like Cape, the Wildcats will ramp up their game to meet the moment.
Once the tournament goes to the round of eight, any team still alive is capable of winning the tournament.
I will not canonize my friend Robin Adair of Tower Hill, but I’ve talked to her over several years when the Hillers did not have the most talent in the tournament.
But they went on to win big games in the semifinals and finals because they show up and step up, and just because you want to doesn’t mean all athletes can rise to meet the moment. It’s a psych and skill game now, fast and focused and only the strong survive.
EAGLES LAND FRIDAY - The Smyrna Eagles football team, now up in the Northern Division due to increased enrollment - no more water tower jokes - comes into Cape Friday night with a 5-4 record and a chance for a winning season after a 27-14 win over Sussex Tech last week. The Eagles can pound the football and are not coming to Lewes to lose a football game. The senior night game will be the last in the 32-year career of head coach Dave McDowell - it is also his senior night - so against that backdrop this is Cape’s playoff game - a chance to end the season with a victory. The great thing about high school football is every Friday night is another opportunity to get crazy and to fly around, to bond with your boys and to share moments to be remembered forever.
NIXON QUOTE - Forty years ago Richard Nixon was elected president of the United States on the pledge to end the war in Vietnam, which he did by simply saying, “I think you guys are ready to defend your own country ‘cause we are outta here like a long fly ball.”
Well, if translated into a sports metaphor that was his message. But perhaps Nixon’s greatest quote when under the siege of public criticism was, “Never shoot down.”
I think of that as sports fence hangers and stadium second-guessers running down those who are hanging it on the line and doing the best they can trying to win games. There is an instinct for a competitor to retaliate, which is not the same as a good defense.
The good defender sizes up the situation and realizes the chronically critical are just not worth the time. “Learn not to be loved,” my grandmother said. “Be strong and self-confident and when you get the open jumper take the shot every time.”
SNIPPETS - Jeremy Diehl ran the New York City Marathon last weekend in 3:59 which is a great job on such a crowded course. That is a 9:03 mile pace and J.D. finished in 12,573rd overall but another way of looking at it, he beat 20,000 runners to the finish line.
Locals J.B. Moore and Chris Corozzi ran the Marine Corps Marathon last Oct. 26 in a time of 4:06 which is cruising speed for these young athletes.
Willie Savage, who won 11 individual state titles while a track athlete at Cape Henlopen - a jumper and hurdler, will be inducted into the Delaware Track and Field Hall of Fame before the close of the calendar year. In other words, I’m not sure when but if Willie shows up for the occasion so will I and his coach Tim Bamforth.
Lance White has been named to the all-decade team of the 1970s for Delaware cross country and will be invited to the year-end banquet if he has enough disposable income to fly in from Italy where he lives. That is some expensive chicken.
I read Eric Burnley’s outdoors column this week and, in spite of writing 5,000 words a week since the fifth grade, I saw words I had never written in succession like, “Trolling with Stretch 25 plugs” and, “Drifting with live eels,” which I think may be the title of my next book.
Speaking of shotguns and Junior Walker, Friday, Nov. 14 through Saturday, Nov. 22 is shotgun deer season and when it is over the herd with be thinned by 6,000 deer who may otherwise be flying through your windshield. Don’t go walking in the woods under an Ipod during this season, sugar pie honey bunch.
-
Sports Editor Emeritus
Email Fredman at fredman@capegazette.com
