Bits and Pieces 10 

  Sorry about the delay in posting this wildly popular weekly column (readership about 150 per week), but I've been incredibly busy. The first issue of our newspaper comes out this week and since we are using a different printer than we did last year when we were testing our concept, some technical difficulties threw a monkey wrench into our operations.

  I am proud to say that I can show you a sample of our first issue. You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader 4.0 to load and view this file. Since it is cool that you will be able to do it, give it a shot and see how it works. Perhaps we might even use this method to distribute papers in the future instead of having more trees killed just for us to print bi-weekly editions. Pick up Adobe Acrobat Reader 4.0 from www.adobe.com To read, download the zip file and unzip. Then click on the file and it will open for you. Delaware Sports <--load.

  We are definitely increasing our air time in December. Delaware Sports will run five days a week in New Castle County. We are not exactly sure which week we will begin the extra airings. To begin we will show the same show during those different time slots, but as some other things begin to develop we will produce a variety of different shows.

  The following notes are some personal observations from this past week and are off the top of my head, so if some particular facts are off a little, please excuse me.

  The best story of the championship season so far was the Tatnall Hornet volleyball team. They pulled off two upsets, against Sanford and Concord, to reach the semifinal round for the first time that anyone could remember.
  The Hornets were fun to watch because, it seemed, on every play there was a body stretched out and flying to make a diving save or save attempt. Heather Robb became one of my favorite players to watch, not only because of her defensive abilities, but her outgoing personality as well. Lauren Ziegler and Devon Grenda were two of the other outstanding Hornet defenders.

  When the Division II girl's team cross country results were being read, there were two of the top 15 individual runners embracing in line anxiously awaiting their total. When Lake Forest was announced as the second place team, Seaford's Jen Willis and Caitlin McGroerty hugged each other even tighter as tears of joy began to flow. It was as memorable a celebration moment as a wild, rush-the-field melee could ever be.

  The St. Marks Spartans boy's cross country team proved that they were the best team this year by winning the New Castle County and State meets. But I don't think anyone expected them to come sprinting across the finish line 2-3-4. Kyle Berseth, Chris Coyne, and Brian Gladnick were the runners who gave the Spartans that edge. Mike Lahm's 8th place finish basically secured the meet barring a total breakdown of the 5th Spartan runner.

  Wednesday is one of those evenings that I wish I could be in two places at one time because the soccer and field hockey semifinals are be contested. Tower Hill looks for revenge against Wilmington Christian and Cape Henlopen takes on St. Marks in field hockey. St. Marks and Salesianum will kick their way through the rematch of last year's soccer final and Wilmington Christian and St. Andrews will look to be the other contestant in the state soccer championship. A spiritual final is assured.

  So St. Marks won the volleyball championship for the third time in a row last night at The Bob beating Ursuline 15-2, and 15-8. This wasn't even close and it was a bit disappointing. With the exception of a few points during the second game, there wasn't much to get real excited about. Lindsay McDonough thought that this game was the first time all year that the Spartans "put it all together," and that's pretty scary. 
  The Spartans now have a 71 game winning streak and head coach Nancy Grisgowitz is 71-0 as head coach of this team. 123 out of 124 matches this team has won now. Many of the second team varsity and even the JV could be starters on most teams around the state. 
  It would be interesting to see this team compete out of state. Delaware isn't exactly a hot bed for volleyball, so it's hard to tell exactly how good this team is. The Spartan girl's swimming team has won about 150 dual meets in a row while not competing out of state, but there is obviously a way to compare how they stand to other schools around the country. The only way for the volleyball to do that is to play out of state teams. The mini-problem is to figure out when that should be done. Should it be AFTER they lose a match now, or while their long winning streak is still intact so they can schedule a Pennsylvania powerhouse or a New Jersey powerhouse (if those states even have one to begin with).

   I'm not sure when I'll be able to get some more pictures up from some of the games we have been taping, but I haven't forgotten nor neglected to do it. It just takes some time that I need to find. I'm also not sure if and when I will be able to do many "Game of the Week" features now that I have to do more things with the newspaper. So if anyone out there wishes to put game notes to paper, I will gladly post them up in that section.

  Until next time..

Marshal Manlove