Ramblings of a Madman 57

 February 17, 2002

by Marshal Manlove
Editor

I’m not feeling as macho as I usually do. During this past week, I have had the Winter Olympic Games on as much as they could have been while I was home. The ridiculous amount of figure skating is having some truly negative effects on me.

I found myself doing spins and twirls in a Wawa the other day. Normally the double toe loop with a coffee in hand would have been good for a 5.9 at least, but the judges in line for bagel sandwiches thought otherwise. I immediately demanded an investigation into the low scores as the head judge (the manager) immediately demanded that I leave.

When one looks back at the all-time sporting event TV ratings, the Winter Olympics Skating finals have a few of the top 50. They compare to the Super Bowl and the World Series as far as numbers are concerned, so this is why NBC, or ABC, or whoever, continue to sissify American men every four years with this "sport." But I challenge this based on the fact that during the early TV coverage years of the Winter Games, the only event at which Americans were consistently any good was figure skating. It only then made sense to schedule the finals in prime-time slots so more viewers could have a chance at seeing us actually winning a medal. Naturally then, the figure skating ratings would be higher because of the placement.

The coverage of this "sport" is just horrific now. We get to see warms up and we get to see the Mongolians and the Lithuanians skate while I still haven’t seen our own athletes compete in the Biathlon or Cross Country or other things LIVE on TV when there are plenty of opportunities to do so.

I will give in to the fact that figure skaters are at least athletes. While their "sport" is not a sport in its present state, these people need to have more athletic ability than say…a curler. Which, by the way, helped to put me to sleep on Thursday night. How the heck did Curling get to be an Olympic sport? Can Golf and Tiddlywinks be far behind? Actually, they can get away with it because it’s not called the Olympic Sports; it’s called the Olympic Games. Since that is the case, I am hoping to be a Gold Medal contender in Monopoly in 2010.

I should also mention for the record that I don’t consider the Luge and Bobsled, the Freestyle Skiing and Snowboarding Half-Pipe "sports" either although they are much more cool than figure skating. After all, how tough is it to sled downhill? The cool part is just the speed of it, which is why other non-sports like NASCAR and Horse Racing are also popular, but better left off of ESPN and the sports pages.

The Canadian skater Jamie Sale was pretty hot though. Noticing that helped me feel a little bit manlier by the end of the week.

No real surprises at the Dual Meet State Wrestling Championships in Dover on this past Wednesday unless we talk about Sussex Central’s performance against St. Marks in the semis. That match came down to the final two bouts before the Spartans could put the Golden Knights away.

I would have liked to see one more dual meet that evening – one between St. Marks and Hodgson. With the Silver Eagles at full strength they could have made a decent run against the Spartans. When Hodgson wrestled Caesar Rodney earlier in the year, they were without two of their main wrestlers, Joe Cylc and Marc Boulden, who would have made the difference in that match. Although St. Marks would have cleaned up with Bobby Shaw, Andrew Donofrio, Joe Ferrara, and A.J. Cessario, Joe and Larry Cylc, Jordan Sianni, and Brian Welch would have scored big points as well for Hodgson. Perhaps it is about time these two schools put each other on the regular season schedule.

The top six wrestlers in each weight class from the Blue Hen and Henlopen Conference and the top four in the Independent Tournament will move on to Dover next week to compete for the individual wrestling state championships. While many of the weight class champions are easy to pick, anything can happen so there is still good reason to buy tickets.

I had wanted to rank individual wrestlers but was having a hard time getting the information that I needed to be as accurate as I wanted to be. With wrestlers qualifying for a couple or even three weight classes during the year, it was going to be difficult unless names were duplicated in other weight classes. That would have made a boring list though, so I’ll have to rethink and re-plan that idea for next year. For example, Andrew Donofrio is qualified at 152 and 160, and he would be the #1 seed in both weight classes. The final decision about which class he would wrestle could be changed and throw the single class ranking all off. Jordan Sianni is another example. He would be the #1 wrestler in 135, 130, and maybe even 140. So, that’s why I stopped that process for now.

I was able to get to both the Independent and Blue Hen Conference wrestling championships as evidenced by the pictures on the site. Both had their share of exciting matches as usual although not very many surprises.
I suppose that Dickinson’s Logan Kelly’s win at 152 may not have been easy to predict. After all, a Ram hasn’t won a Conference title in about eight years or so.
Dustin Creighton from William Penn wrestled Hodgson’s Tyler Smith in the 160 pound final. Both had older brothers, Damien, and Ryan respectively, who were state champions. The one point victory by Creighton left him a little lighter as he chipped a tooth in the process. This will make him an automatic All-Heart Team candidate for our next set of awards since he realized that the injury occurred yet he shook it off and continued to wrestle.

The Tigers of A.I. duPont had a strong showing in the Blue Hen Conference tournament. Of note was the second place finish at 112 pounds by Jesse Wencius who also showed some intestinal fortitude during his match with Hodgson’s Ryan McLaughlin. Wencius needed a brief injury time out to throw up whatever water he had left in his body, which left some of the girls sitting in the front row close to the mat where he lost his lunch feeling a little ill themselves. But he just got rid of it and hit the mat again. These are the types of people who end up succeeding later in life. They will work through whatever they have to go through to achieve their goals.

Here is a look ahead at the favorites for the state wrestling championships now that everyone is settled in to the weight classes for this upcoming weekend.
103: Ryan Gralewski, Howard; Mark Degli Obizzi, Salesianum; John Hummel, Lake Forest

112: Ryan McLaughlin, Hodgson; Michael Crain, Smyrna; Josh Lowe, Sussex Central; Joe Corsini, Archmere. Corsini is the dark horse here and could surprise an unaware opponent.

119: Bobby Shaw, St. Marks; Ken Krygier, William Penn, Will Saylor, Indian River; Nick Civitella, Archmere. Civitella rolled rather well with Shaw at the Conference finals and could pull out an upset or two along the way.

125: Brian Welch, Hodgson, Garrett Faulkner, Caesar Rodney; Richard Dondarski, Sussex Central. Dondarski defeated Faulkner in the Henlopen finals. Welch pinned Faulkner in the dual meet and Dondarski has also beaten Welch and Faulkner has beaten Welch and Dondarski and what I'm really saying is that these are the three contenders in no particular order.

130: Pat Atkinson, St. Marks; Orion Cameron, Sussex Central, Ryan Spencer, Middletown. Atkinson might very well be alone in this class listing if it weren’t for his back trouble. He is apparently not feeling any pain, but a pain killing shot has helped that problem.

135: Jordan Sianni, Hodgson. The rest are just fighting for the honor of getting pinned in the final by the state’s all-time leading match winner.

140: Casey Strohmayer, Sussex Central; Kyle Skinner, St. Marks; Luis Quinones, McKean; Chris Lazartic, Salesianum. Very well could be in that precise order.

145: Joe Ferrara, St. Marks; Chris Hudson, Newark. This should be the final. Who will want it more? Maybe Sussex Centrals Jordan Lowe.

152: Andrew Donofrio, St. Marks. No sense adding any other name here.

160: This is a pretty wide-open class. Craighton and Smith could do battle in the finals but Sallies Zack Plerhoples and Sussex Central’s Raheim Brunskill could be the two who decide the final just as easily. The seedings will be critical. Throw in Laurel’s Ben Ralph also.

171: Mark Reynolds, Caesar Rodney; Brian Cimorosi, William Penn, Matt Foy, Salesianum. Again, this is a class where there is no clear go-to guy. Throw in Hodgson’s Mark Boulden as well.

189: Josh Cherriman, Smyrna; Brian Willis, St. Marks; Luis Maleno, Howard. Maleno is undefeated this year at 22-0 but may lack the big match experience that Willis has.

215: Joe Cylc, Hodgson. He is undefeated in state and should end up the season that way.

275: A.J. Rovillard, Sussex Central; Larry Cylc, Hodgson; Joe Coen, A.I. duPont. Coen put up a good match against Cylc in the BHC finals, but Cylc was clearly in better condition. Conditioning will be the key to this weight class this coming weekend also.

The team state champion used to be decided at this tournament also. It has since been replaced by the dual meet state championship, of course, and this is why we rank wrestling teams in two ways. Sussex Central has been on a roll of late so look for them to place rather high, unofficially. Hodgson is also on a pin-fest recently so look for them and St. Marks to battle for the unofficial team state championship all the way down to the end of the tournament.

So the race for second place will be on this week in the Swimming and Diving state championships. Well, maybe for the boys the race is for third place and that should be between Newark, Concord, and perhaps St. Andrews.
For the girls, Newark’s slim margin of victory over Concord suggests that their streak of second place finishes to St. Marks could be in jeopardy. Brandywine and Caesar Rodney will most likely round out the top five.

What is left to figure is who will swim where. Swimmers can participate in two single events and two relay events each. (I think I have that right.) So while swimmers like Kaitlyn Brady and Kristina MacLeish could win four different individual titles each just based on their qualifying performances during the year, they will leave some events open for others to claim crowns. Last year, for the record, Brady swam the 50 and 100 freestyles, while MacLeish broke state records in the 200 and 500 freestyles.

The swimming preliminaries are Wednesday and Thursday.

We went over the basketball seeding systems a week or so ago. So without repeating those, let’s take a look at who would qualify now.

For the girls:
A.I. duPont, Concord, Caesar Rodney, Seaford, Sanford, and St. Marks would receive the automatic berths. Caesar Rodney’s win against Polytech yesterday put them in the lead in the Henlopen North Conference.
The 18 at-large berths (without doing the actual math) look to be William Penn, Glasgow, Christiana, Charter, Polytech, Cape Henlopen, Smyrna, Tower Hill, Padua, Wilmington Christian, Caravel, Red Lion Christian, St. Elizabeth, Indian River, Mt. Pleasant, Dover, Brandywine, and Dickinson. Notably absent are the Ursuline Raiders who, ironically, are 4-2 in the Cathlolic Conference, but 1-12 out of it. But that does not take into consideration the fact that their tough out-of-state schedule could provide some extra bonus points that could very well land them in the mix when all is sorted out next week.

For the boys:

Newark, McKean, Hodgson, Concord, Sussex Tech, Dover, Lake Forest, Laurel, Sanford, St. Andrews, Caravel, St. Elizabeth would be the automatic teams. The 12 at-large berths would go to Salesianum, Archmere, Red Lion Christian, Tatnall, Cape Henlopen, Caesar Rodney, William Penn, Glasgow, Delcastle, Howard, St. Marks, and perhaps Mt. Pleasant or Smyrna. Most of these are dependent upon the bonus point figures that can’t be figured until all of the regular season schedules are completed.

We will do a contest based on the state basketball tournaments; one similar to the college basketball bracket tournament contests that we all see in March in our offices. Everyone will get a chance to pick the winners from start to finish to win a prize, which will most likely be an awesome Delaware Sports shirt.

We will tape from the finals of the boy’s and girl’s swimming championships on Saturday. I am working on getting someone to the wrestling individual finals and am sure that will also be covered as usual. The Indoor Track championships are the following week and then the basketball championships. We will be there, God willing, at all of them again as usual.

Marshal Manlove