Tough to believe that summer is over now, isn’t it? I have been in denial of that fact for a couple of weeks simply as an excuse not to write anything here for the last five weeks.

I used to write long previews here each season but I just don’t have the time these days to do so since I do have to do things to earn a living and this site and associated articles don’t do it for me.

This is not to say that nothing is getting done here on the site. Every single day there is some addition or subtraction no matter how trivial it may be. So cut me a little slack there, ok?

I am flattered that there are people who actually write letters and ask me when I will pen my next creative masterpiece for the site. Well, ok, they don’t say that exactly, but I do get them.

Because of that, I am working very hard on creating a bi-weekly newspaper again. Now perhaps I shouldn’t have said that because I may jinx the whole thing, as I seem to do whenever I announce that I am working on something, but it’s important for some people to know that out there. I AM TALKING TO YOU POTENTIAL INVESTORS OF COURSE.
I have been working on the business plan for the thing that can show POTENTIAL INVESTORS WILLING TO EARN SOME MONEY BY INVESTING IN MY NEWSPAPER that they can really earn money doing so.
My limited resources have kept me from jumping right in to the whole project as I have done before although the temptation is there. It will just take more than I have to get it to the break-even and profit points.
Without investors in line, I have thought about just setting a launch date and soliciting subscribers and raising the funds that way. It could still happen but there are a couple of people with whom to speak first. BUT DON’T LET THAT STOP YOU FROM CALLING ME AT 547-4645 TO TALK ABOUT INVESTING IN THIS PROJECT ANYWAY!

Anyway, the video business here has grown and it allows me to see more games than I would if I just went to cover them for news here. Since there are now a few people who tape with me I can watch games while I make the copies for the teams and individuals for whom I tape. We have a bunch of football teams on our schedule and I’ll get to see pretty much every team by year’s end.

A few years ago I wrote in this section that the glory days of Salesianum football were long gone. Oh, quite the riot I caused behind the scenes when I wrote that cross-country and golf were the big sports on campus at that time.
But when Bill DiNardo took over as head coach last year, there was an instant change. The 9-2 year and 7-0 start were just further proof of that and the opening day win against the state champs from Newark is even more.
The fanatical attitude of Sallies sports fans, particularly in the student body, has never been in question in my mind. Now, with a football team ready to take them to the Promised Land who knows just how crazy the body could become. We could possibly witness an on-the-field celebration that could get chronicled in local history books.

I saw the St. Marks-Charter game in person this past week. While the hype has been all about the Force’s Corey Phelan, it was clear that the better quarterback on the field was the Spartans Junior Scott Wallace. It was clear from play number 1 that he had markedly improved his game. Wallace, like Phelan, is now also the punter for the Spartans and his first punt of the game was for 57 yards.
Phelan had to deal with some injuries to his receiving corp., but his real trouble on opening day for both teams was that the Spartan defense has also clearly improved from a year ago.

Cordie Greenlea, the ex-McKean head coach and new Brandywine coach, is one of the good guys out there and he is easy to root for. It was good to see his new Bulldog program start off with a D1 win against Polytech in convincing fashion. We’ll get to see next week how the Dawgs look to stack up in D2 as they take on Archmere at home.
Ursuline takes on Padua this Friday evening in volleyball. UA has a 60 match winning streak as of this writing although they will first face St. Elizabeth on Wednesday. The UA-Padua match is a can’t-miss match for volleyball fans…but I’ll miss it because I’ll be in Seaford, of all places, that evening.

There were a couple of summer stories that I was fuming about and nearly so much that I almost wrote a piece of two in here WAY before today.
The first had to do with the Wilmington Games, an event that has been in real existence for as long as the Diamond State Games.
My particular concern was that they reported having over 7,000 athletes compete this year and it was just reported as gospel in the local paper.
The Wilmington Games do not charge an entry fee to compete, which is great for athletes, but there are a few problems there. First, it is nearly impossible to get 7,000 Delawareans together to do anything active like that even if it means actively guzzling beer. I know, I try to get them to do it each year for the Diamond State Games (not drink beer mind you, but compete.) The First State Games couldn’t get off the ground because they couldn’t get enough local people to compete either, and that was why it had to cancel operating. Further, the Governors Council of Health and Fitness tried for TEN YEARS to resurrect the First State Games but concluded that they just could not gather the local competition necessary to support it.
There were two articles about the Wilmington Games that I recall that mentioned basketball. One said that last year they had 80 teams entered and then there was one that mentioned that there were about 20 this year. Need I say more about what was wrong with that?
But since the Wilmington Games mentioned that they had 80 teams last year with over 7000 athletes in 26 sports understand that they are claiming that basketball is the sport with the highest participation level. That would mean 800 athletes in that sport alone.
I checked with the people who are close to some particular sports that were held in the WG, in particular volleyball, track, swimming, and soccer. Those events would have been the next highest in participation numbers. NONE of the people with whom I checked had even heard of the Wilmington Games until I asked them about it. Go a couple of steps further; the DSG had over 2000 people this year but over half of them were from out of state. And we have spent money advertising on radio, TV, newspaper and direct marketing. The Keystone State Games in PA used to have 20,000 people compete in their state and they were down to 5000 from the whole state of PA last year. They have resorted to following the DSG’s lead and allowing out-of-state competition.
I personally would like to see the Wilmington Games succeed because I would like to participate in them myself. This means that I don’t have anything against what they are doing other than possibly exaggerating some things without really knowing that there is at least one person who knows better about that – ME.

Another thing I know about is what it costs to run sports tournaments and it was why I really blew a gasket when I read about the new basketball tournament slated to take over as the new big tournament during this coming holiday season. I forget its name off the top of my head but I do clearly remember that they somehow secured $200,000 in local tax revenues to run their event. The event founders also claimed that they needed to generate another $300,000 to cover their budget. What wasn’t clear was for how long those funds are supposed to last them, but it seemed to me that those funds were for one year.

Now…man I get so furious when I start to think about this…that $200,000 comes from OUR pockets. It’s OUR TAX MONEY and it’s played off as something that we are just supposed to blindly support.