Cape secretary Amy Gooding has sports stories to tell

Amy Gooding - Cape High School’s front desk secretary Amy is married to Chuck, and their daughter Tina was the goalie on the 2014 state championship field hockey team. And there are daughters Kate and Marybeth. Amy has three relatives in the Delaware Sports Hall of Fame - Gerald Doherty III, Helen Doherty and William Doherty, her mom's siblings from a family of eight. Gerald gained 220 yards on six carries for Delaware in a football game played in 1946 and was a fifth-round pick for the Baltimore Colts. Helen founded and coached Ursuline's basketball team and was a great athlete herself in basketball and softball. Billy Doherty starred at Archmere and Villanova. He started for the Wildcats in football, basketball and baseball as a freshman and was a longtime official of high school football. "I think the athletic talent jumped over me," Amy said. That is doubtful; pick her first in any coed staff softball game. Amy is one of six kids from an Irish Catholic family and has 39 first cousins.

Field hockey pipeline - Izzy Delario, a Cape 2013 graduate, played on four state championship field hockey teams - two at Sussex Tech and two at Cape – then went on to start all four years at UMass. She will graduate this spring. Izzy was recently named to the U.S. Developmental National Team, which was created to catch players too old for the U21 team yet good enough to contend with the best players in the United States. Izzy has great stick skills and can run all day. I tag her as “Olympic hopeful,” and she remains in the pipeline.   

Shoutouts to shutouts - A shutout in a basketball game at any level, even for a half, sounds the “task force alarm” in my world, time to bring in all relevant stakeholders along with some compassionate experts to analyze and correct the situation. Last week, the Sussex Academy boys’ JV team lost to Woodbridge 56-0 and it was incorrectly reported as a varsity score. On the flip side, the Seahawks girls’ JV team - they don’t have a varsity squad - is 10-0, but they must kick it up to varsity next year. Cape’s JV girls (10-2) have three first-half shutouts this season. I’m not sure what that means. Actually I am sure; it’s some good Cape play coupled with a heavy dose of really bad competition. The thing is, the kids wearing the uniform are often  not getting support from all connected adults in the system.    

Saturation - The girls’ field hockey/lacrosse LexisNexis may be the most over the top, especially in the Cape coastal region. Hard-driven and overemphasized competitions leading to what, exactly? Young girls are getting absorbed into a giant amoeba of joyless performance-based competition. The effects of all this are poorly researched, but college players share their feelings with each other, not with outsiders. Get to the crux of the matter, maybe something to read on the way to the next invitational intergalactic championship club tournament where all the college coaches rim the field in lawn chairs, the brims of their hats pulled over their eyes and clipboards resting on their tops of their shoes.    

Character flaw ball - Every high school honor society grades on character, and if you get a composite score of below average based on how others see you, then you are excluded, even if you have perfect SAT scores and the highest GPA in your class. Grandmom Rose: “If you can’t be nice to people, at least shut up.” The Baseball Hall of Fame has a Rule 5 character clause, which is being invoked to keep out pitcher Curt Schilling; the vote is a reaction to his right-wing rantings. Yes, there is freedom of speech, but also freedom of consequences for what one says. “Write it, post it, own it” is the way it works for all of us.

Snippets - I think Bill Belichick is a quietly charismatic non-genius, closer to a good high school coach who coaches out of the fear of walking into Wawa Monday morning a loser. I’ve been to pro practices that are filled with position coaches who have no clue how to instruct and improve and make players better. But Bill reminds me most of George Glenn, thoroughly prepared - can X and O with the best of them, and on game day there’s a game plan that can be executed - it goes way beyond the laminated color-coded drive chart. I’ve had a disciplined January. I joined RISE, I show up, push weights and ride bikes and restrict caloric intake. I could be a better hydrator, but as Grandmom Rose told fat Aunt Rose: “Just because you’re fat doesn’t mean you can’t get fatter. Hit the brakes and slide on ice for awhile, don’t even think about backing up. Go on now, git!