This has been a traumatic couple of days here at Delaware Sports. First we learned of the retirement of William Penn wrestling Coach Jack Holloway and then Elisabeth got voted off of Survivor. I’m not quite sure that Survivor is even worth watching anymore, even though there is just one 2-hour show left, but I am sure that the William Penn wrestling tradition will continue with assistant coach Jim Zimmerman, a former Colonial wrestler under Holloway, elevated to the head coaching position.

To make up for some of that loss, the News Journal welcomed back Jack Ireland to their sports pages. Ireland, a popular columnist for quite some time, will go back to covering horse racing and small colleges as he did before his heart transplant operation.

It’s time to chat for a moment about the XFL, the new football league promoted by Vince McMahon, the God of the WWF.

I was a huge fan of the XFL and will miss it now that it is gone. There are a few reasons that the XFL was great to begin with.

I loved the new camera angles and shots that the XFL brought into view. Anything new is good for me. Watching the same tired old NFL shots from CBS, NBC, FOX, ESPN, and ABC made me ready for the change.

Because I am someone who produces a sports show and even does most of the camera work, I had a different appreciation for some shots. I loved the on-the-field camera that the guy who was probably in the best shape of every single person, including the players, used. In between each play, these guys ran from the sidelines with a 25-pound camera on their back into the huddle to film the teams quarterbacks call plays. It was genius because many people want to know what goes on in that huddle besides the basic play calling.

I also enjoyed the robotic camera over the field of play that could follow the path of the running back. It was a bit awkward to watch at first, but only because it was different. After becoming accustomed to the angle and the path it took I couldn’t do without it.

Putting microphones on the coaches and players to the extent that the XFL did was nice also. It added a different sense of reality to the show and I’m sure a different set of headaches for producers and censors.

Then there were the cheerleaders. These cheerleaders blew away any NFL squad out there now, but the whole concept ended up being changed because they were too racy…which was why they were great to begin with.

So with all of these positives things to talk about with the XFL there were only negative press reports. The XFL was treated like a joke all year long.

The reason the XFL was treated that way was because it was new and that’s the only reason. They dared to take a chance and try something different and they traveled off that old, tired, worn out beaten path. God forbid someone tries to do something different in America these days because they might as well be shipped off to a leper colony. Why is it that people are like that? Why are people so scared to give something new a chance?

This touches home with me and those who have followed us here for the past few years would know why. When Delaware Sports came to life in 1995, my own friends laughed at me for even trying to do what I was doing. Most of those people are no longer friends of mine for that reason. The underlying cause of that laughter is simply because people are comfortable with their own mediocrity and lack of motivation and they always feel comfortable dragging others down to their own level.

Though I may personally never become a financial success, it will never be because I stopped trying. What if Thomas Edison stopped after the light bulb experiments failed after the 500^th attempt? We would still be sitting around by candlelight now. What if Colonel Sanders stopped trying to succeed after losing a fortune three different times in his life? What if the Wright brothers quit? What if Alexander Graham Bell quit after all his initial failures?

We won’t quit here at Delaware Sports or the Diamond State Games. Delaware Sports has finally begun to make an impact on the local sports coverage scene. In 1995 I was thrown out of buildings for trying to videotape games for my show. Now, we are invited in. What would have happened if I let that first year get me down? I talked last week about the amount of money that I’ve invested in this operation, but it has never been about the money (I can always make cutbacks anyway.) It will come along. I’ll eventually find a few more people with some courage who are self-motivated to succeed, and we’ll get by. The Diamond State Games will lose money in its first year, but when we get prepared for year two, we will have more support and even more athletes.

So I hope that the XFL continues forward. McMahon is a marketing genius and has the cake to pull if off. It will be a matter of creating a perception in the minds of the masses that will be acceptable, but he can do it. After all, there are actually still people in America who believe that the WWF is real life wrestling, so he certainly has the skills to create that perception.

There was some talk in a circle that I run with about Dynasties once again this week. It was my group’s conclusion that a team winning four consecutive championships earns the right for that program to be called a dynasty.

Off of the top of our heads, let’s count the current Delaware Dynasty’s (my fantasy league baseball team name…. currently first in my division). There is the Newark Football team with four; the Hodgson Wrestling team with five; the St. Marks girl’s swim team with…um…eight if I remember correctly; the Ursuline Outdoor track team with ten and the St. Marks Boys’ Soccer team with five.

Next year, the teams that will have a shot to call themselves a dynasty will be the St. Marks volleyball team and the Salesianum swim team. This doesn’t count any team that might win their third consecutive title this Spring such as the Caravel softball team.

Watching a program end its championship run causes emotions to run a little wild. I was reminded of this when the St. Marks and A.I. duPont girls’ soccer teams played this week with the Spartans coming out on top 5-0. I was on the field taping the championship game between them last year and when I watch some of that tape back it literally causes chills. The highs were as high as I have ever seen them in person and the lows even lower as the Spartans stopped the four-year run by the Tigers. It might very well have been the birth of a new dynasty at St. Marks, but it is quite early to talk in those terms with that team right now. There still a couple of schools eager to get the chance to cause some tears on a St. Marks bus ride home from a tournament game this year.

Speaking of tournaments, they will be starting up soon. We’ll have as much coverage on the website as possible as well as our usual TV coverage. We’ll begin fresh taping with the New Castle County track and field championships on the 11^th and 12^th. The States are the following weekend. I’ll also try to put as much of the schedules for the tournament up here as I can get my hands on.

The Wilmington College softball team was represented on the Brandywine Sports Corner the other night (our radio show.) Attending were teammates Katy Saloni, Jaleah Brown, and Lisa Scanlon. Head coach Sherri Nau and assistant coach Gretchen Loose joined them. Nau was a Glasgow high graduate and is one of the top pitching tutors in the state. Loose is the head field hockey coach at Glasgow who has a sister who played for Wilmington last year.

Brown and Scanlon were also from Glasgow high and are freshmen at Wilmington this year. Brown was a first-team all-stater last year who just earned National NAIA weekly honors for her 13-19, 10-rbi week for the Cats. Scanlon, a second-team all-state pitcher last year, is playing right field for Nau (a little double entendre there) and hitting .348 with three homeruns.

The Wildcats have only 10.5 players on their roster (one injury) and have still managed a 20-13 record for the season. Their last home game of the year is Saturday and their CACC playoffs begin next week. The Wildcats are currently fourth in the CACC with Goldey-Beacom right ahead of them in third. The playoffs will be held in Caldwell, N.J., some old stomping grounds of mine.

The Blue Hen Flight A Conference is where all of the baseball excitement has been this year. Brandywine, Newark, and William Penn are slugging it out with each other for top honors. The Colonials Jason Rogers had an 18 strikeout performance last week to stake a claim for player of the year honors. That’s 18 out of 21 total outs. Not a small feat.

Soon there will be talk of how the baseball tournament needs to be changed to avoid the obvious difficulty presented by a single elimination tournament. The obvious problem, just in case it’s not obvious to non-baseball fans, is that a quality baseball "team" is judged by the depth of its pitching staff. Many teams can put up one star pitcher who can win on any given day in baseball, but it’s the second and third games of a series that ultimately determine the better team. The St. Marks baseball team has, arguably, the best complete pitching staff in the state and would win most 2 out of 3 series with that depth. But should they lose a close game, like anyone can in this sport, a team without a solid number two or three pitcher that could hang with the Spartans #2 or #3 would get a shot at a title.

This is why only eight teams should make the state tournament each year. There are only 40 teams in the state, having "only" eight still amounts to 20% of all of the teams. A double elimination tournament OR a first round best of 3 with one extra day rest between the first and second rounds would eliminate this inequity. Feel free to suggest another way or two, but you’ll come back to one of these methods.

Softball doesn’t face this trouble since the underhand motion allows someone to throw seemingly forever in one outing.

The Delmar Wildcats recently had their three-game, two-day stretch that I mentioned last week. Not only did they have three games in two days, but also two of them went extra innings. The cats pulled out two wins out of three, but the one loss was to Milford who they beat earlier in the season. Still, with a thrilling 2-1 twelve-inning win over then number two Indian River, the Cats must realize that they have a good shot a great things in the post season.

For you track and field fans out there, remember the name George Smith when you go to watch the long jump and triple jump events at the states. Smith, a talented wide-receiver on the football team, is poised to bring home two medals for the Sussex Tech Ravens who join the track and field top ten ranks for the first time in Delaware Sports history (this Delaware Sports.)

The Penn Relays are this weekend and the one person we will be interested in watching here will be Ursuline’s Colleen Taylor. C.T. has run a 5:02 1600 already this spring after having set the indoor record this past winter. The current record of 4:54.4 is held by Concords Vicki Huber and was set in 1985. If Colleen is strong and the weather nice (which it is supposed to be) look for a serious challenge to this mark. She has not been challenged in a race all year and with the talent that will be on the track that day, she is bound to be pulled forward.

A recent registration that was accepted for the Diamond State Games in June came from former state champion in the shot put and discus, Chris White from William Penn. Chris is a freshman at Purdue University in Indiana and he will compete in the Open Discus and Shot. Naturally, he will be a favorite for the Gold.

Playing and also coaching a Senior women’s volleyball team is former Delaware Head Coach Barbara Viera. One would think that since Viera wrote an actual book about coaching volleyball that her Delaware Lady Wonders will be a favorite for Gold in their 60 and under division.

There will be more notes about participating athletes as the days go by.

If you are considering entering the Diamond State Games, do so right away. There are limits to the amount of teams and athletes that we can have in each event AND there is an overall entry deadline of May 31. So that is just about a month away from now.

Goldey-Beacom will pick up a key basketball player for the women’s team next winter. University of Delaware will be losing Brianna Maloney, a Padua Academy graduate. Maloney didn’t get a chance to play much at all with Delaware after successfully walking on to the team, but she will be a go-to person for the Lightning. Maloney is 5-11 with a nice jump shot, who will also give Goldey some needed height in their front court. She was a member of Padua’s championship team from three years ago.

The addition of De’Ja Green, a Newark graduate, along with St. Marks’ Lindsay Hageman will also give them a pretty talented backcourt.

The sleeper of the spring sports season is the St. Marks girl’s lacrosse team. Kayte Hall and Sarah Stephens (of volleyball and swimming fame respectively) are two of the state's top scorers and the Spartans are undefeated. With St. Andrews losing ¾ of their team from last year to graduation and Friends not playing up to their potential yet, the Spartans are in great position to take a number two seed and whiz their way deep into the tournament. Tower Hill will enter the tournament as a favorite provided they could enter healthy, but that hasn’t been the case so far. Make a mental note of this little rant.

I would make mention of how many goals Caesar Rodney’s Megan Collins has scored so far this year, but whenever I do, someone writes to claim that the total is inflated because she should be pulled out of games after scoring a whole bunch on one game. It’s a subject we could talk about again sometime because she is only a junior, so that’s what we will do.

Ok, I’m tired now and need to mourn the departure of Elisabeth from Survivor. So have a great weekend.