The Ramblings of a Madman 73

November 15, 2002

by Marshal Manlove, Editor, Creator of Words, Gallivanter 

Congratulations to Mr. Jack Holloway, the Athletic Director and former wrestling coach from William Penn High School for being named the new Executive Director of the Delaware Interscholastic Athletic Association (DIAA, formerly DSSAA) this morning.
Holloway, 56, was the unanimous choice from the three final candidates for the position. He should begin his new position in the first week of December.
What exactly will this mean for Delaware high school sports is yet to be seen. DIAA is a different animal now that it has been brought under the jurisdiction of the Board of Education. I don’t frankly understand it all nor do I have the time to figure it all out right now, but it will be interesting to see if there is any fallout as a result of this rearrangement for people such as Bobby Jacobs, and the wrestling community overall. Both Jacobs and the Delaware Wrestling Alliance fought pretty hard to bring about change. One might think that the DWA is rather happy about Mr. Holloway being named to this position, but he is known as a "By-the-book" man from what I have been told, so I wouldn’t expect a firestorm of change for wrestlers.
Jacobs is quite another story. He, of course, is the Director of "Slam Dunk to the Beach", the big holiday basketball tournament, which we will start hearing more about in the next few weeks. Talk on the street is that there will be at least a few Delaware teams that won’t be heading to play in that tournament this year as a way to penalize Jacobs for the part he played in this change. Bob DePew was a tough Director of DSSAA, but he had the respect of most of the Athletic Directors in the state who will ultimately figure in the decision of whether or not their schools basketball teams play in that event.

There are two more weeks of high school football left in the regular season, for some there is only one week left. Let’s take an approximate look at how the teams stand now and what could happen this weekend that will effect the playoff race.
In Division 1, William Penn and Sussex Central are in. SC currently has 53 points and William Penn 51. St. Marks currently has 46 and Middletown 39. Those, as it stands, are your playoff teams. The seedings will be by point totals.
Middletown has Christiana this weekend and does play Sussex Central next weekend while William Penn and St. Marks have McKean and Cape Henlopen respectively left on their schedule. There are some circumstances where Salesianum, Dover and Newark could slide into the playoff picture, but that begins with Middletown losing both of their last two games and Sallies and Dover need to win out. Newark needs losses by Middletown and a loss by the winner of the Sallies-Dover game.

In Division 2, Delmar (42 points) is in as the Henlopen South Champ and had just Woodbridge left to play. The Flight B title is still up for grabs. If Hodgson beats Salesianum this weekend, they are the Flight B champs despite losing to Howard, who is currently tied for the Flight B lead, because of a higher point total (currently 39-37) because there is a three-way tie with Concord. Should Concord lose to A.I. duPont, Howard is the Flight B champ because in a two-way tie, games against each other are the first tie breaker and Howard beat Hodgson…. I think. If Hodgson loses to Sallies and Howard beats Mt. Pleasant, Howard would win Flight B…. I think. Concord isnt going to lose to A.I. duPont though. Howard will have a tough time with Mt. Pleasant, but should pull one out, and Hodgson will have their hands full with the Sals.
Laurel has 35 points and just has Seaford left to play. Those four teams, I believe will be your playoff teams, but figuring who gets to play Delmar in the first round is yet to be decided. Ideally, the other three teams want to be the 2 or 3 seed and not run into that freight train right away. St. Elizabeth, Smyrna and Archmere are still hanging on by a thread, but it will take the unlikely collapse of Laurel which would need to lose to both Seaford and Lake Forest, which isn't going to happen.

Ursuline cruised to the state Volleyball championship defeating St. Elizabeth in two games. From courtside, where I was taping, it wasn’t a contest beyond the first play of the game. The Raiders simply had too many weapons deployed; Melissa Ferguson, Kate Mills (both first-team All-Staters), Sarah Williams and Rachel Pawlikowski all smack the daylights out of the ball. Plus they threw in the 6-foot sophomore Alex Flanders in the front line, Maureen McBride, the setter, is 5’10" and even in the back row they used the 5’11 Kelly Mark. Size does matter…especially in volleyball.
The Vikings still had a great year. Led by Dana Olmstead (the player of the year) and Dana Cushing, the Vikings made short work of their first three tournament opponents also. Shea Haney also provided size and power for MaryPat Kwoka’s team but it just wasn’t enough. I wonder what this team would have looked like with Ashley Carberry who had to transfer out of St. Elizabeth and ended up playing with Christiana this year as a junior.
I have a feeling (based on the e-mail) that there are some Ursuline fans a little upset with the Player of the Year selection this year. Melissa Ferguson seemed to be the favorite for those who wear red. Olmstead was a First-Team player last year whose reputation preceded her this year. Ferguson may very well have been at a disadvantage with the other great players on her team drawing some attention away from her.
The real question is "where was Maureen McBride on the All-State team this year?" She was 2^nd team All-Catholic behind Cushing, but didn’t show up with even an Honorable Mention. Excuse me, but this was just a mistake. Someone had to get the ball to the hitters on the team that won the State Championship. On top of it, she is a legitimate Division 1 player AND recruit for college. Yet, there were names on that list that simply didn’t belong there and were just there for some other sentimental reason. Ditto Rachel Pawlikowski on that note. She should have been one of the top 18-20 players also.
I was wondering what Padua would have done with Ashley Whitmarsh in their lineup for the tournament. Ashley was missed the tourney due to a case of mono, and she was missed. Her absence truly allowed the younger Olmstead, Amanda, to shine brightly. In the match between the Pandas and the Vikings in the Semifinals, the two sisters played evenly but only because Dana stepped up later in the match. Amanda clearly earned her First-Team selection.
Remember that this is just my opinion, so don’t get all in a snit if you don’t like something that I just wrote there.

I think that there is still a vote for MVP in Cross-Country. Someone can correct me if I am wrong about that, but the message board is full of debate about it.
While Ryan Hamill was the State Champion and is an excellent representative of his school, Chad Darlington from St. Marks and Charles Gibson from Dover should garner enough votes to make this interesting as well. Darlington was on a hot streak there for a while and helped lead the Spartans with a few of his wins. Gibson blazed trails all year long himself and helped lead the Senators to a 3^rd place at States just ahead of St. Marks.
Hamill could very well suffer the same fate as Ferguson did in Volleyball because he is also surrounded by a large group of stars. In the end, either athlete can make a legitimate claim to that honor.

The Field Hockey teams will come out soon also. Ashley Smeltzer from St. Elizabeth could very well be Player of the Year having led the state in scoring and almost single handedly helped the Vikings earn a winning record this year. But is a 7-6-1 record worthy of enough votes from coaches around the state? I’m not sure. In Major League Baseball, Alex Rodriguez hit 57 homeruns and picked up a Gold Glove for his defensive efforts, but it was Miguel Tejada from Oakland who shined while playing for the Division winners who picked up the honor.
If you were choosing based on the latter criteria, the favorites would have to be either Paige Schmidt from Tower Hill or Amanda Warrington from Cape Henlopen. My money would be on Warrington simply because Schmidt still has a year to go, but I don’t get a vote and don’t even deserve one, so who knows.
Speaking of Cape Henlopen, in my 7 years of covering high school sports, no #1 team has lost to a #16 seed in the first round of a tournament. In the NCAA basketball tournament, that has never happened either (just in case you are insane enough to pick that type of upset in your tournament pool next March).
On paper, the Saturday final between Tower Hill and Delmar is a total mismatch. The turf seems to be one of those intangibles that make a big difference in this game. I’ve certainly heard the complaints already that the Wildcats are at a disadvantage because they don’t play on turf at all during the year. But I’m not buying that for a second. If the turf does anything, it reveals which is the slower team. So if that is the case, the difference is really team speed and not the turf. The turf field gives truer bounces unlike grass and that is just the way it should be. No one wants a bad bounce off of an untrimmed clump of weeds to effect a championship game so this is why I like the game on the turf.
I don’t think Im going out on a limb here when I say that Tower Hill is at least a 3-goal favorite to win this match on Saturday. But Delmar plays in the South where the hockey competition is simply more competitive than it is upstate these days (much unlike volleyball or basketball). The Sussex Central win over Cape is proof positive of that.

I haven’t seen a soccer game all year and wont until the championship so it’s pretty hard for me to comment about that now isn’t it?

Things will begin to hear up a little more with the Diamond State Games after the turn of the year. Those of you who have added your names to our date base of athletes will get information as it comes in, so please be patient. If you are someone who wishes to lend a hand or want to support the DSG in any way, please give me a call or drop a line.

Delaware Sports became the official DIAA State Tournaments Videography service this morning. This was one of the projects I was working on during the last 8 months. We will begin producing and selling State Tournament Highlight tapes for DIAA very soon. Our first tapes will be of the Cross Country Finals and the Volleyball championship, which will include the semifinals and finals. Later on, we will also make available for purchase selected highlight tapes from a couple years past. We will select the tournaments that we shot the best and offer them to the public, finally. All of these tapes will have narration and music where appropriate and will be an excellent memento and souvenir for years to come. We will work to get the website to a point where we can accept payments on line and we will also have a physical presence at all of the state finals for order taking right on site. This was a very important project for us and without much doubt helped me to decide to keep running Delaware Sports as some sort of business. Had it not gone through, there was a chance that we would have been done with the TV show at the end of the year.

I wish I could promise that I would write more often, but it’s just hard. Thanks to everyone who says hello and says that they read the site and this page. That is what truly keeps us going here and we will continue as long as we continue to grow…which we are. We are starting to get more and more response from downstate and the response has been rabid for sure.
We are pulling out of Chester County for a while because of the expense right now. We will move back in when the timing and the finances are better.

Marshal Manlove