Kill the radio and ditch the AirPods

Car rides - Kill the radio and ditch the AirPods; just tell sports stories. I met coach Dan Staffieri on a long car ride to the Harrisburg Farm Show Arena to watch Chester High basketball in the state championship finals. Staffieri was the football coach. We were mutually connected by sportswriter Dick Doughtery of the Bristol Courier Times. Coach was a storyteller at a level that I remember 60 years later, in contrast to 22,000 yesterday rides that never leveled up. Coach recounted, “I was in the classroom one dreary and rainy Tuesday afternoon when a secretary broke the silence – or mayhem – with a message over the intercom. ‘There is a man in the office who wants to see you, says he's a football coach who wants to see you and your quarterback, whoever that is. I told him we don’t get coaches and players out of class. And to be honest, he looks like a guy that’s been wandering around the neighborhood. He’s wearing a trench coach and red baseball hat, but not the Phillies.’ ‘Great, get his name just so I know who it is we're ignoring.’ A pause, she gets back on the intercom as all the kids in class are staring at it like it's an actual person. ‘He says his name is Woody Hayes.’”  Back then, big-name coaches were closers who actually walked into the school office. I thought of that story Saturday before the Ohio State and Penn State kickoff at noon at Beaver Stadium. Young people reading this are asking, “Who is Woody Hayes?” By the way, perhaps Cape should have beaten Dover and Penn State should have beaten Ohio State last weekend. Coaches Mike Frederick and James Franklin were co-captains and teammates at Pennsylvania’s Neshaminy High School Class of 1990.   

You never know - Sports people love saying that expression before challenging games because mostly you do know, but not always. Lake Forest beat previously unbeaten Newark Charter 1-0 in the quarterfinals of the Division II field hockey tournament and will face Wilmington Friends Wednesday, Nov. 6, in the semifinal round. Lake lost regular-season games to Cape 2-0, Milford 2-1, Delmar 3-0, Smyrna 4-1, Sussex Academy 2-0 and Caravel 3-2. Lake is athletic and aggressive with no fear of losing because they’ve lost six times. Can they beat 13-1-1 Wilmington Friends in the semifinals? You never know. St. Georges football (4-5) upset Smyrna Nov. 2, by a score of 19-6 and will play at Cape (5-4) Friday night, Nov. 8, with the winner getting an invitation to the postseason while the loser scans GoFan digital tickets.  

Nobody does it better - Although sometimes I wish someone would. “The call on the field is overturned” is a familiar message in baseball and football. In high school sports, there is no replay system, so wrong calls become permanent and may be game-changing. In football, the referee wears a white hat, and the crew chief has the authority to say to one of his crew, “What did you see, because no one else saw it, so pick up the fallen flag and put it in your pocket and save it for a rainy day.” Officiating is such a hard job, and with several photographers rimming the field, most representing the home team, there will always be digital evidence of wrong calls or those mistakenly applied. For example, a runner sitting on the ground with the football cannot get up and run for a touchdown. I call it deakin’ the freakin’ zebra.

Snippets - Olivia Montini, a junior and Swarthmore College cross country runner, has been part of the local running scene since she became ambulatory. Olivia was recently chosen for the Centennial Conference first team, the first for the Garnet since 2006. Olivia ran 22:29 for 6K at the conference meet – a career best – leading her team to a third-place finish. JT Davis, former state champion wrestling at Smyrna, is a junior at Lehigh University, starting at the 197-pound weight class. Ryan Baker (Cape), a sophomore cross country runner at Lehigh, ran a personal-best 24:43 for 8K, earning 28th place and second on his team to help the Mountain Hawks to a fifth-place finish at the Patriot League Championships. The same afternoon, younger brother Jason won the Henlopen Conference Championship, running the 5K Killens Pond course in 15:55. Pitcher Jada Savage went the distance on the mound, leading the East Cowenta Lady Indians to the 6A Georgia State Softball Championship with a 4-3 win over Buford University High School. Jada is the daughter of Janice Savage, and granddaughter Jeff and Cindy Savage. Jeff and Cindy, former local coaches, now reside in Georgia. Go on now, git!