Bits and Pieces 7 

  As usual, I'll begin this week with some behind the scenes notes. 
  The Diamond State Games will be holding a fund raising event on Saturday February 3, at the Wyndham Garden Hotel in downtown Wilmington. Dave Tiberi, world champion boxer is penned in as a speaker. We are also currently negotiating with a member of the Howard Stern on-air staff to be a guest. As soon as we figure out if we can make that happen, we'll make an official announcement.
  We are also hoping to have the opening ceremonies and the track and field events held at Delaware State University. It would be a great central location to begin with and we are planning a party for the opener that should be fun for those who aren't even involved with the DSG. 
  To be placed on the DSG mailing list, e-mail Director@diamondstategames.com (That's me) so you can be kept up to date with DSG news and information.

  Please consider subscribing to our newspaper that will be hitting the streets in just a few weeks now. We will publish an issue every other week and it will be sent directly to your home. Revenues generated are used for operating expenses for the paper and for the television show, for which we need to secure some new equipment and expand our operations to allow for more people to benefit both directly and indirectly from our efforts.

  Mets in 6.

  Now, onward we go.....
  There are only two weeks and a day before the state tournament schedules begin to be played out. The Volleyball tournament begins action first with first round games to be contested on November 4th. The first state championships to be awarded will be the Cross Country states which are going to be held 11-11 at Killens Pond State Park.

  The Mt. Pleasant head softball coaching position is currently vacant. Dina Orpello has left the Green Knights for a position near the Lancaster, Pa area. Assistant coach Rich McKinnon is also the athletic director at Mt. Pleasant, so the search begins for a new head coach for the upcoming year. Call Mr. McKinnon at Mt. Pleasant for more information about the post.
  Padua's varsity catcher on the Panda softball team, Laura Taylor, has made a verbal commitment to attend Seton Hall University near my old stomping grounds in New Jersey. There will be more about Laura in a future column.
  A.I. duPont's Monica Peterson has accepted a full scholarship to the University of Maine and will be a member of the women's basketball team while studying Sports Medicine. Peterson was a first-team member of the Blue Hen Conference team and was an all-state selection as a junior Tiger. She averaged 11 points per game and 9 rebounds per game for the Blue Hen Conference Champions. The Maine Black Bears are in the America East Conference which means that she will get to play against her former Tiger teammate Tracey Howell who is at the University of Delaware as a freshman this year.
  Caravel Academy's Tiara Malcom will be attending the University of Delaware on a full scholarship next year. She needs to finish out her high school career first however.
  How wise is it to offer rising seniors these deals before the season begins though? Don't most seniors get senioritis? How does that effect their play during their last year in high school? Caravel was one game away from the championship last year, and will need Malcom's full attention all year long.
  When basketball season starts, I'm going to do an analysis of the U of D women's basketball team. It's not going to be pretty from all indications, and I'll start from the top and work my way down through the ranks.

  Football bits.....
  5-0? Yuck. Sussex Central beat Cape Henlopen in a defensive sleeper. Some football fans appreciate a tightly battled defensive struggle, but not this one. Let's hope that the Dover-Sussex game this Friday night is a bit more exciting. Both teams are undefeated at 6-0. The winner should have the best chance for the automatic D1 playoff berth if they play the rest of their schedule cleanly.
  Kevin Nelson rushed for 245 and five touchdowns for Delcastle as the Cougars dumped McKean 43-41. The Highlanders can score with the best of them, but can't keep anybody off of the board. Charles "Doodles" Coleman caught three touchdown passes from the junior Highlander QB Terry Kelly in the loss.
  Smyrna's Mike Pennewell broke the 1000 yard rushing mark when he added 183 yards against Woodbridge. The junior Eagle finished his sixth game of the season with a total of 1078 yards. 
  Mt. Pleasant's Adam Pfister kicked three field goals in the Green Knights 34-14 win over Concord. Pfister hit from 23, 41, and 47 yards away and lined up for a 59 yarder near the end of the first half. The snap was bad and kept us from perhaps witnessing a bit of history. Pfisters tow 40-plus kicks each would have been good for 55-60 yards. Some pro teams need to take a look at this kid right now (if they haven't already).
 Rob Edwards rushed for 150 yards for William Penn against Brandywine as the Colonials blasted the Bulldogs 47-6. Edwards had a 94 yards touchdown run int he first quarter.

  Volleyball bits....
  Concord (14-2) became the Flight B champs and earned an automatic berth to the state volleyball tournament when they defeated Dickinson (9-6) in three games at Dickinson Wednesday night.
  This was the best game, of any sport, that I've seen this year, and it will be featured on next week's show. It went two hours and at the end, players from BOTH sides could be seen teary eyed from the battle.
  But let me just say that Dickinson should have won this game, and their coach was the reason that they lost. Gerry Szabo is a nice guy and seems to know the mechanics of the game fairly well, but he is a controversial figure who can overcoach a game to death.
  Ram senior, and captain, Ann Underwood is a legitimate first-team all-state candidate. She is also the only senior on this team and is the clear leader of the squad. Her shot is the hardest that I've seen in five years at the high school level (harder than LaShanda Simpson's from Glasgow, or Cameo Neeman's from Ursuline). All match long she was nearly un-diggable, but for some reason, Szabo has a rotation that actually pulls her out of the game for short periods of time. 
  Underwood's jump serve was also giving Concord a hard time, and yet Szabo would yank her anyway.
  So in game three, Dickinson is ahead 12-7 when Szabo pulls Underwood from the floor. In the stands Tim Wampler and I looked at each other and kind of shook our heads at the strategy. "She must need some rest," Time said.
  12-8, 12-9, 12-10 Concord starts to come back. I thought that this was the time for Underwood to return because it was clear that the momentum had shifted, and the team on the Ram side of floor was flustered. 12-11, 12-12, tie game, and now Underwood was back. But it was too late, Concord had the flow of the game controlled once again, and they went on to win the game and the match. 
  There was no excuse for this to happen to the Rams in that game, and the tears on Dickinson's side of the court should have been prevented. And they could have been prevented also.
  This is not to take anything away from the effort of Colleen Sherk and her teammates from Concord. Sherk stepped up and made the hits, blocks, and digs that were needed when they were needed, and they deserve the Flight B crown.
  Archmere avenged an early season loss to Sanford yesterday. They cruised through the Warriors in the first game and were leading game two 14-5 before Sanford made a furious comeback and held off a half-dozen match points before finally succumbing 17-15.
  Newark took the Flight A lead when they beat Brandywine in three games. The Yellowjackets are 9-1 in the conference and the Bulldogs are now 8-2. 

  Soccer bits....
  This has been a tough sport to handicap this year once we get past the top four or five teams. There have been 10 teams floating in and out of the bottom five of the top ten this year. They include Tower Hill, St. Elizabeth, Archmere, Wilmington Christian, Hodgson, Caesar Rodney, Seaford, Sussex Central, and A.I. duPont. 
  There are basically three tiers of quality of play in the state of Delaware; the upper echelon, the above average teams, and all the others. The tiers are not split equally however. In soccer, there are really only two teams in that top tier, St. Marks and Salesianum, and an argument could be made that there is really only one (St. Marks). In soccer though, this second group is larger than in other sports like football, field hockey and volleyball. There are about 14 teams in that group that could win on any given day and that should make for an interesting state tournament for sure.
  Of course the big game of the week was the #1-#2 match between St. Marks and Salesianum. Adam Stuller scored a hat trick for the Spartans as they held on to their #1 ranking defeating the Sals 3-1. The Sals were the last in-state team to beat St. Marks way back in the last century.

  Field Hockey bits......
  The rematch of last year's state championship went to Wilmington Christian, again, as the Warriors beat William Penn 4-2. Sarah Raniszewski scored twice for WCS. The Warriors did suffer another defeat during the week, however, as the Caravel Buccaneers dropped them to 7-4 with a 1-0 whitewash. Megan Richardson scored the lone goal for Caravel which, not surprisingly, plays pretty good defense. They should since most of them are members of the state championship softball team including goalie Nancy Tokar who also happens to be their catcher.

  Cross Country bits....
  The St. Marks-Salesianum, St. Marks- Ursuline dual meet is either the 24th or 25th at White Clay Creek State Park. We'll be there to tape it provided we can figure out the exact date and time. This will be a barn-burner during both races. We hope that everyone is healthy so there can be no excuses at the end of the day.
  I recently walked the course at White Clay Creek. There is a hill towards the middle of the course that caused me to need a rest after just walking up the thing. It's probably very near a 45 degree incline. I did get kind of confused while walking through there though since at one point the white line I was following split off in two directions. What's up with that??
  We will be using at least three, if not four cameras, at the Killens Pond location for the states. We hope to have Brian Feeley do the on-air analysis of the course for us as he did last year at Brandywine Creek. Mr. Feeley is the Hodgson Vo-Tech head X-C coach who may just have a D2 state boy's champion on his team in Andrew Scarpitti. Scarpitti and Wilmington Christians Paul Lucernoni should be the two pre-race favorites.
  Sadly, Caesar Rodney's Jill Hajec is out for the season. The division one state champion as a sophomore last year has a stress fracture that requires that she not run at all. 
 Hajec's injury opens up Division one now. A couple of favorites will be Brandywine's Jenn Kutney, who was the champ as a freshman the year before Hajec, and the Spartan's Jacki Justison. 
  Wilmington Charter picked up its first conference title in school history as the girl's team won the Flight B X-C crown. Emily Smith is the Force's number one runner.
  Middletown won the boy's Flight B crown I heard. I am now officially confused about which division they are in. This means research will be necessary unless someone can help me out via e-mail Marshal@delawaresports.com. 

Marshal Manlove