Bits and Pieces 50

 December 17, 2001

First, a couple corrections from the winter preview. 
Markeda Hollingsworth transferred from Glasgow to A.I. duPont over the summer. The junior is a legitimate talent and gives the Tigers a serious boost. As a result, the top ten changed.

Rachel Pawlikowski and Melissa Hoberg are NOT playing basketball for the Raiders this year. I was working strictly from last years roster on that one and just didn't dig deep enough. Thanks to junior forward Kelly Mark for setting me straight.
The Raiders lost their first game played this year to William Penn on Saturday. The best part of the whole contest was watching head coach Jeff Flanders hop, skip, jump, and twist down the entire length of his bench whenever his daughter Alex was taking a shot. Alex, a freshman (I'm nearly certain) could be a big help to the Raiders in the future if everything works right for her. She is also the daughter of Sarah Gause (it does, after all, take two to make one) who is one of only five (off the top of my head) Raiders to score 1000 points in her career. Flanders did see his daughter score her first career varsity basketball point, a free throw.

The Colonials have to be excited about their win against UA. Head coach Chuck Bartels pressed the Raiders mercilessly towards the end of the first half and it paid off well. This team will have to hustle all game, every game, to keep winning though, since they lack size.

Did anyone else notice that the first-team field hockey all-state team did not include a single defensive player? How does that happen? There was a serious error made there which left a few very talented defenders in different places than should have been. Tower Hill had 13 shutouts during the year and although they were absolutely represented by their offense on the all-state team, Hiller defenders  Kerry Sallee, Paige Schmidt, and goalie Megan Mills weren't even mentioned. 
And don't even get me started about our own Dana Anderson who ends up on the same Honorable Mention list on which she was last year. 
Choosing these teams is not an easy task because there is an abundance of subjectivity, but the easy things need to be fixed, like naming some defenders on the first-team.

Tower Hill field hockey forward Noelle Kanaga had a real nice season for the Hillers scoring over 10 goals this year. But did you know that Noelle is a National Karate champion? I would bet that you didn't unless you were listening to the Brandywine Sports Corner recently. Noelle took gold in a 16-and-under National Kumite earlier this year and was actually supposed to participate in this year's Pan-Am Games. However, the attacks on 9-11 put a wet blanket on that. She will have to look forward to the 2008 Olympic Games, when her particular sport will be a Gold Medal sport.

Tower Hill's Maggie Giddens is heading to Michigan State to play field hockey for the Spartans next year. Giddens was the second leading scorer on the Hillers team this year.

St. Elizabeth head volleyball coach Mary Pat Kwoka took the Vikings to the final round of the state volleyball championship for the first time in school history. Kwoka, a former all-state softball and basketball player at St. Marks, has built a nice program in her nine years at the helm. 
In Kwoka's first year as a high school volleyball coach, she guided the Ursuline Raiders to their first ever volleyball state championship. She then switched to St. Elizabeth which had a combined 0-39 record in the previous two years. A two-win season in her first year was followed by a four-win season and the wins kept coming from there. She has a combined 80-70 record at St. Elizabeth (if I remember correctly, that record is just from St. E's) and has developed a program that will be a force for a few years to come.
Returning for the Vikings next year will be first-team all-stater Dana Olmstead and second-team all-Catholic Conference setter, Dana Cushing. Shea Haney and Ashley Carberry will provide two more powerful weapons along with Olmstead that will be difficult for teams to defend.
The whole Catholic Conference will only get stronger in the next few years as Bill Strickland works with Archmere Academy, and Angel Payne develops Padua Academy's program. That isn't good news for the public school programs.

This was prepared shortly after the finish of The Beast of the East wrestling classic at the Bob Carpenter Center. Tournament Director Vic Leonard did another outstanding job assembling 64 talented wrestling programs from around the country, and there was exciting wrestling all weekend.
Two Delawareans reached the final round- St. Marks Andrew Donofrio, and Hodgson's Jordan Sianni. Donofrio had been to the finals the past two years wrestling Zach Esposito from New Jersey's Blair Academy both times. He had to do it again this year as well with Esposito entering the weekend ranked as the number one 152-pounder in the country. 
Donofrio, who has obviously put on more muscle since last year, jumped out to a quick lead but Esposito turned up his game a notch and pulled out an 8-5 victory. 
What a drag that is though. Think about wrestling the best guy in the country and then have him decide to turn it up a notch on you. To Donofrio's credit, he was there, again, and if he stays healthy, he will win a fourth Delaware state wrestling championship. Donofrio will wrestle at Virigina Tech next year.

Jordan Sianni's life changed today when he defeated a two-time Ohio state champion, and the number one seed from St. Edmond's Academy, Ryan Lang. And Sianni broke him down in convincing fashion with a 13-4 win. That set up a final with Jeremy Walsh from Oley Valley near Reading. Walsh pinned his semifinal challenger in 47 seconds and since no one seemed to have any good idea of who he was, there was no telling how the final would unfold.
Walsh scored first capitalizing on what may have been a slip by Sianni, but the Silver Eagle fought back and made the match difficult for the Pennsylvanian. Walsh had a two-point lead with just four seconds to go and Sianni locked in a move and turned Walsh to his back. The buzzer saved Walsh and his 9-7 win. 
After the semifinal win Sianni was approached by coaches from Nebraska, and Ohio State, to name just a couple of schools that want the senior to wrestle for them. 
That is why this tournament is so important for these wrestlers and is exciting to watch. Futures can be, and are, decided by the outcomes of these matches.

Consolation round wins by Hodgson's Brian Welch and Joe Cylc gave the Silver Eagles enough team points to pass St. Marks in the overall team point standings to win the Governors Cup. This Cup is given to the Delaware team that places the highest overall in team points. Blair Academy won the overall title again and had four champions in the process.

Speaking of wrestling, former Silver Eagle and 2001 Delaware Sports Athlete of the Year Mike Welch is having a great start to his college career. Welch is off to a 17-0 start having defeated more than one returning All-American and has also made the Dean's list at Williamson Trade School in Pennsylvania.

As a side bar, other former Delaware Sports Athlete's of the Year have faired well since receiving this prestigious honor bestowed upon them by Delaware Sports and their fans. We began the Athlete of the Year award in 1997 and gave Ursuline's Cameo Neeman and Caravel's Alex Faircloth our first ever awards. Neeman went on to become one of the University of Delaware's all-time leaders in kills in her four years as a Blue Hen volleyball player. 
Um...we don't know where Faircloth is at this point in time, but I'll find out and report back.
In year two, the honors went to Mt. Pleasant's Alison Stewart and Middletown's Brandon Brown. Stewart was the only one that we were not able to surprise along the way as we prefer to do when we make the presentation. When Alison went to Mount, there was still some discord in the Brandywine School District and since there were a few people who were looking for some face time in the District Administration at that time, they rooned it (intentional misspelling.) Stewart moved on to play Division 1 field hockey at North Carolina, a perennial national field hockey  power. 
Brown went to Western Maryland to play football, but returns to Delaware and will become a Blue Hen for next year.
Ryan Smith from the Hodgson wrestling team is now wrestling with the nationally ranked club wrestling team at Delaware. It is a club team because Delaware won't let them play varsity (one of those tricky Title IX things) but they were one of the best "clubs" in America last year. And they were one of the top clubs despite the fact that they don't have a home and had to wrestle all of their competitions away.
Jenn Oakes from Padua Academy was our third female winner. Oakes was a state champion distance runner and all-state cross country runner as well. Oakes is now a member of the newly formed cross-country team at Wilmington College. 
Last, but not least, was last year's female winner Colleen Taylor from Ursuline who is on the track and cross country teams at Villanova University. We will perhaps visit the Taylors, both Colleen and Tricia during an upcoming Delaware Invitational Indoor Track meet at the Field House in, I think, February.

So jeer not at our readers and viewers picks for the Delaware Sports Athlete of the Year, since they have- you have - chosen wisely. Some of the polls that we post on the website are indeed used as a guide for the final nominees for AOY honors, so please feel free to tell friends when they are posted. 

A programming note.....
Holiday season is rest time here at Delaware Sports so updates may not happen every day. I usually take a week or two of vacation at this time but may just decide to take two long weekends instead. If I leave town with my two dogs for a road trip, there won't be any scores, if not, perhaps there will be plenty of things to read.

More programming notes.....
Delaware Sports "On Location" from the Charcoal Pit will make its debut January 7th at 7:30 p.m. It will be St. Marks night that evening with members of teams perhaps taking each other on in some sports trivia. Winners may perhaps be invited back to play against winners from the other three DSOL's scheduled at The Pit. Hodgson Vo-Tech will be featured on the 21st; Wilmington College may just go against Goldey-Beacom College teams on February 4th; and we think we will line up a Brandywine High night for our fourth show and last in February. 
If these shows are successful, we will do more. They will be successful if we know that there are more schools interested in bringing lots of people down to eat burgers and big bowls of ice cream at The Pit. Everyone who shows will get a chance to be on TV since we are dedicating one camera to the audience (signs displaying love for yours truly or our lead cameraman Rob Campbell will get air-time priority.) Call me or e-mail me if your school would like some extra exposure and would bring lots of hungry people to watch the show.

Until next time....

Marshal Manlove