While I am standing and staring at a three-way fork in the road in my life for the last few weeks, I have still been able to get to a bunch of games and see a whole lot more on tape.

I will most likely refrain from mentioning any more about the fork in the road until or unless something positive comes from it. But have you ever been to that place more than once in your life and found yourself staring at it again with the experience and knowledge gained from the last time you were there? Has it happened even more than once in your life? Did you find yourself more or less confused in the present moment despite having some experience in that situation? I find myself more confused since I realize that I don’t really know a whole heck of a lot about stuff even though I certainly know more than I ever did.

Now you can feel free to grab onto the line that says, "I don’t really know a whole heck of a lot" and use it anytime you don’t agree with anything I write or say. That is fine with me.
I did find myself questioning myself just yesterday while in the middle of a 45-minute conversation with Val Whiting, the former Ursuline/Stanford/WNBA basketball star who is running a personal training business called GAMESHAPE in Wilmington.
Basically the meeting was about how Val will soon become a contributor to the website as often as her two young boys and her business will allow. Her column will be about…well, it will be about whatever she wants it to be about, that’s what it will be about.
Anyway, we naturally start talking about basketball and me, being the studly local sports reporter, found myself trying to talk sensibly about basketball to someone who really knows something about basketball.
Think about it. She has played basketball at the international level with the best players, coaches, and referees in the world. I run a dumb website talking about high school basketball…IN DELAWARE. In the middle of the talk, which was almost becoming a debate, I nearly had to slap myself up side the head and say to myself, "ok, shut up now and listen you fool, because no matter how studly you are, you’re just not in the same league when it comes to this stuff." So, I shut up. And you just had to be there to appreciate how profound that moment was for sure.

One thing I do know is that we Delawareans (after 19 years here I have finally started to call myself one of them) think we are a lot better than we really are way too often when it comes to sports. Just because one of our teams is a top-ranked team doesn’t really mean that we will stand much of a chance when we cross the boundaries. Naturally, there are those great exceptions like the Raider basketball team last year and perhaps this year’s Salesianum soccer team as recent examples.
I traveled to Malvern to tape and watch the Sallies football team take on Malvern Prep on Monday. Coach Bill DiNardo was alleged to have some concerns about this game and if that were indeed true, his concerns were realized. The 48-21 score was not as bad as this could have been save a couple real key defensive plays early in the first quarter.
Malvern Prep is a D2 school and was ranked around 8^th in either the region or one of the divisions in PA, I forget. Salesianum is our #4 ranked D1 team in the state. Not a single team that I have seen play so far, and that includes William Penn, Newark, Middletown, and Concord, would have stood a chance against this team, at least on this particular Monday.
Thankfully for Salesianum they have one of the best football players in the state in Bob Sabol. He’s not a big guy, as you may know, but he is as fast as anyone playing football here, has great hands, great instincts, and is a big-play maker.
After Sallies had forced one fumble while MP was in the Sals redzone up 7-0, MP was again within the Sals 20 when they forced a second fumble. Sabol grabbed it and tied up the score with an 85-yard jaunt. Those two series, where the defense held, managed to keep the game from being 21-0 in the first quarter. It was a great momentum swing, unlike one I’ve seen in a football game this year, but even that was not enough.
Even Sabol’s 45-yard TD reception (or however long it was) wasn't a big enough play to overcome this particular team.
It’s always humbling to step outside and cover our teams against some of these PA teams in football. The Sals have Interboro at home coming up soon, and I remember what Interboro did to Sallies last year.
While on the subject of Sallies, one has to continue to talk about their running back, Nick Dominelli. There isn’t a tougher kid his size around and if you think there is, I guess we’ll see him in the finals of the state wrestling tournament up against Nick.

Another great player around here is William Penn’s Darin Henry. It is a tough call for me to choose whether it is him or Sabol that is the best player that I have seen this year (or last for that matter). This Henry kids catches everything and every week I see a tape he seems to make a diving catch or a big play. I know I probably wrote something about him the last time I wrote too, but he is still worth mentioning.

The big football game this week, IMHO, is the Brandywine-McKean game held now at AI duPont HS instead of McKean and instead of Dickinson, Saturday at 1030 am. Both Flight B teams are 5-0, both coming off of a real bad period of years and are both tied with Concord in Flight B with those 5-0 marks. These teams are both great stories this year.
Cordie Greenlea, head coach of Brandywine, gets to coach against the last team of which he was a coach, taking on his former assistant Mike Ryan.
It’s going to be tough to root for either team since both of these guys are good guys. So, I will just root for a great game and hope to be able to say, "hey you remember that Brandywine-McKean game back in 05?" years from now.
Key players are Chris Lachette, the QB for Brandywine, and Salah Hawkins, the RB for McKean.

Leave there no doubt that I believe that the Caesar Rodney field hockey team is still clearly the number one team here at Delaware Sports. This team is a machine and it looks like a small college team.
Debbie Windett’s Riders are fast, in great shape, are aggressive, strong, and well skilled and if they are beat this year I will be shocked. Injuries are always a possibility that could make a call like that look foolish later, but with all else equal, this season’s race is for second place.

While at Turf Bowl watching a few teams get a regular season chance to play on the turf, I again had to hear the lunacy from a parent complaining about a run-up score. The difference this time was that I was there watching "this tragedy" as it was called and looking at what was taking place.
I won’t mention the game or the parent or anything else about the players and coaches involved. I watched this game from the beginning and the winning team was ahead 3-0 halfway through the second half. Two-thirds of the way through the half, the bench was quickly emptied as the coach gave the balance of his/her players what could be the only chance to ever play field hockey on the artificial turf at the U of DE or any other U of Anything. During the balance of the game, this team scored three more goals with the starting line on the bench and the first-string defense still on the field for the losing team.
It was after goal 5 where I heard that ridiculous crack about what a tragedy this game was.
So, in this guy’s head, the second stringers are just supposed to go into a game and not do anything, even though the other team is clearly trying to still come back and win. Meanwhile their parents are in the stands rooting for them and the kids are perhaps trying to do something positive in front of the coach that might open up a starting spot for them at some future point.
UGH!!!!!!! I can’t stand that asininity! So, I will say no more about it other than to say that I am still shocked that there is so much asininity (I really like that word and wish it was I who crafted it).

Hmmm…I just thought of a new word: ASININNY, plural ASININNIES. Oh, ya gotta love those. It's a noun and means (roughly) "Those that are plagued with asininity of the mind and tongue".

What else…I know there was something else.
Oh yes. The volleyball season is beginning to look interesting as St. Marks has begun making a strong move of late. They first handed Cardinal O’Hara of PA a 3-2 defeat for their first loss of the year. That was the same team that ended Ursuline’s 65-match winning streak just the week prior. Then the Spartans knocked off Padua 3-2 avenging two early-season defeats in the AI tournament.
Lizzie Williams earned some Player of the Week honors after the O’Hara win and she could very well be the Player of the Year at this point from her setters spot for SMH.
Some other key players in the Catholic Conference who would challenge Williams for that look to be Shannon Elliot from Padua, Kelly Wohlhagen from Archmere, Jess Bunnell from Ursuline, Cassandra Joiner from Concord and Kirstyn Sanders from Charter.
No dirty e-mails about those comments either. I’m trying to say nice things about some kids, so leave me alone.

Now for this week's health tip and it is specifically about exercise. 
Exercise now and then, its good for you.

Ok, that’s enough for now. Back to staring at that 3-pronged fork.