So all I can say is congratulations to Salesianum for crushing the state record for team points for the third year in a row. I’m just sad that I missed taping the 400 freestyle relay record that they set in the meets final race. Rory Connell, Mike McCreary, Kyle Bull, and Dan Klee shaved almost three seconds off of the mark that they set just last year with the new face being the freshman Connell.

Lost in the boy’s meet was the performance by Middletown’s Steve Earley who won two championships, one in the 200 IM and the other in the 100 backstroke.

Also lost in the shuffle was Dan Fallon’s fraction of a second win in the 500 free over Connell who had five of the state’s fastest times this year. Fallon repeated as 500 free champion.

The swimming and diving final Delaware Sports rankings reflect the top ten finishes at states. Since the state meet is where it all really counts, this has been the best way to truly measure which team is the best in the state.

There were four records set in the girl’s meet held earlier in the day on Sunday. Kaitlyn Brady of Mt. Pleasant tied her 50-meter freestyle record with a 23.76. Newark’s Christy Williams set the new 100-Fly record on Saturday and was a little short of it on Sunday, but even Sunday’s mark bested the old record that was 19 years old.

Caesar Rodney’s Kristina MacLeish laid claim to the best performance of the meet as she set two new records in the distance freestyle events of the 200 and 500 meters. The sophomore Rider edged the old record holder in the 200 freestyle, Cassie Connell of Newark by 1.4 seconds in the race and knocked .35 of a second off of Connell’s freshman record set in 1999.

It was Connell again who was second to MacCleish in the 500. Cassie swam her best 500 time of the year breaking 5 minutes in the process, but MacCleish broke the 17-year-old record by .6 seconds.

One of the happiest people to see the new record in the 200 seemed to be Connell. Clearly friends with her downstate counterpart, Connell even raised MacCleish’s hand in triumph when it was clear that a new record had been set. The moment was one of the most touching acts of sportsmanship I have seen for some time until Sunday evening.

That moment came in the 140 pound wrestling championship between St. Marks Joe Ferrara and Caesar Rodney’s Dwayne Graham. These two wrestled in the recent dual meet state championships against each other with Ferrara taking a slight victory out of the deal. Ferrara was a defending state champion and Graham was a second place finisher the year before.

During a Ferrara blood time out, the two wrestlers were squared up at the center of the mat while the two referees were cleaning up near the edge of the mat. They were engaged in a stare down and exchanged some pleasantries as the crowd began to roar at the sight.

Fittingly, the match went in to overtime where Graham emerged victorious with an acrobatic takedown. At center mat when Graham’s hand was raised, Ferrara’s hand was attached to it acknowledging and respecting his rival’s effort.

Sportsmanship was out the window during the McKean-Hodgson basketball game that decided the Blue Hen Conference boy’s champion on Saturday.

I realize that McKean hasn’t won a basketball title of any sort in 30 years, so perhaps the young fans need a bit of a break here. But they were booing the Hodgson Cheerleaders. You don’t boo the cheerleaders. We don’t want to boo anyone at the high school level. Wait until you go to a pro game and boo the opposing players, that is what they get paid for.

The McKean fans booed the Silver Eagle cheerleader who was doing a gymnastic run down the middle of the court during a timeout. That was uncool and uncalled for and wasn’t funny.

Worse yet, though, was that the Hodgson fans retaliated at one point and threw a couple of the McKean cheerleaders pom-poms out on the floor during a Highlander cheer. That was uncalled for, uncool, and wasn’t funny either.

What would have been classier for the Hodgson fans to do to retaliate was to stand up and cheer for the McKean cheerleaders. That would have been far more effective.

With the upcoming tournament on the horizon, I would hope that this lack of respect and common courtesy could return in time for an enjoyable tournament.

Fans also need to stay off of the court during the game. When sophomore Silver Eagle Art Bowers dunked to ice the game with 13 seconds left, fans started celebrating out on the court! What’s up with that?? Jump around and cheer and scream and yell, but stay off of the floor! Get it together over there before it’s too late. There is no excuse for this nonsense.

Speaking of tournaments, the girl’s seedings were announced and exactly what I was afraid was going to happen, happened. St. Marks and Caravel are in the same bracket seeded 4 and 1 respectively. A.I. duPont gets the 2 seed and Caesar Rodney gets the 3. This is where we need to part company.

Sure, the system is fair to a point, but I’ve seen all of these teams play, and C.R. isn’t the third best team in the state (sorry). And Polytech isn’t the 8^th.

Let both those teams prove me wrong because I can live with that. What is most likely to happen though, is that either the 14^th seeded Mt. Pleasant Green Knights or the 19^th seeded Cougars of Delcastle are going to knock Caesar Rodney out in the second round, and we will have to witness a whole group of crying girl’s who think they have let all of their friends and families down.

As I write this Hodgson and St. Elizabeth were playing a one game playoff to earn the right to play the 9^th seeded Blue Jays from Seaford. I would imagine that Hodgson would come out on top and become the 24 seed. Do not be surprised to see the Silver Eagles take a first round game either.

Where the boy’s are strong down south in basketball, the girl’s aren’t quite there yet. There are some scattered decent players like Kaneisha Trott from Sussex Central and Toni Jones from Cape Henlopen, but (without mentioning names) one of the more talked about players flat out cannot dribble. Dribbling, I would think, would be a nice thing to be able to do in a basketball game.

Padua’s Ashleigh Brown suffered a devastating injury to one of her fingers that required emergency surgery to save the finger after a nasty collision in a game over the weekend. The last report that I heard had her missing the rest of the season. This is a tough blow for the Pandas who lose their number one rebounder and number two scorer. They will face the winner of the Christiana-Delmar game and could be in for quite a challenge when the Vikings come to visit.

The Mt. Pleasant girl’s team got whooped against A.I. in the Blue Hen Conference Championship. But they were without their two top players. Bianka Brunson, one of the top players in the state was out with a bum ankle. She was on schedule to return for the tournament.

Deanne Munn is a Green Knight outside scoring threat who is also a 7^th Day Adventist. As far as basketball is concerned, she cannot play on Saturdays, which was when the championship game was held. This won’t be an issue for the tournament though as all playoff games are during the week, and the finals are on a Friday night.

The A.I. duPont and Glasgow boy’s basketball teams both lost key players to grades. Neither team could afford to lose either of these particular players, particularly at this time. This has been a huge problem this year and it’s so ridiculous and is such a waste.

Get well soon wishes to William Penn head coach Jack Holloway who was to undergo open-heart surgery just one day after sitting matside in the individual state championships. Talk about sucking it up!

Delcastle wrestler Tom Lawhorn who wrestles in the tough 152-pound weight class has quite a tournament. He beat the favorite (Zach Kopp from C.R.), and the number one seed (Dustin Craighton from William Penn) and only ended up in 5^th place. His double overtime win against Kopp brought down the house at Delaware State University.

Congratulations to staff writer Joanne Hunt for her fourth place finish in the diving competition. Joanne entered the final round in sixth place and nailed all three of her dives to make the two-step leap into fourth.