DELAWARE SPORTS IN THE 2000S 

On every front the new century brought with it a dimming of spectator sports in Delaware. The Internet had arrived in full force and it became awfully hard to sit through three whole hours of live game action. In 2001 Dover Downs increased its grandstand capacity to 135,000 - capable of seating one in every six Delawareans. By the end of the decade track officials were scaling back to 95,000. Even the gold standard of Delaware sport fandom, Blue Hen football, was suffering. Attendance at Delaware Stadium declined every year from 2005 until 2015 with no end to the trend in sight. Students were hardly showing up on Saturdays at all and it was a popular meme that when they did they never lifted their heads from a smartphone. But season ticket sales to the faithful were down from a high of 11,000 to scarcely 6,000.

There was less to watch as well. The McDonalds LPGA Championship pulled out of Delaware in 2004 and left the state without women’s professional golf for the first time since 1987, hoping to raise more money for charity (it didn’t happen and McDonalds withdrew its sponsorship in 2009). The Delaware Smash also departed after a 13 years of World Team Tennis play in 2009. The Smash won the championship in 2003 by thumping the New York Buzz 24-12 for coach Brad Dancer behind fan favorites Paul Goldstein, Samantha Reeves and Liezel Huber. Goldstein and Reeves were voted Male and Female Most Valuable Players that year as the Smash rolled to a 13-1 record and won their only title.

The face of Delaware sports was changing as well. Since the 1984 Olympics six of Delaware’s eight Olympians were women. The best basketball player was a woman, Elena Delle Donne, who became the face of the WNBA without abandoning her Delaware roots. The best tennis player was a woman, Madison Brengle who won over a million dollars on the professional tour. Delaware State boasted a nationally ranked bowling team - the women. In 2009 the Hornets made it to NCAA kegeling Final Four before bowing out to eventual champion Nebraska 4-2 in the national semi-finals. Along the women unfurled nine consecutive strikes for a school record in the Baker scoring format where each team member rolls two frames.

There were highlights for the Delaware men as well. In 2001 Tubby Raymond won his 300th football game as the Blue Hens ground out a win at home against Richmond, 10-6. Only 11 other college football coaches at any level reached that milestone. After 36 years Raymond stepped down and was replaced by K.C. Keeler, a one-time Blue Hen linebacker, who leaned heavily on transfers from bigger schools to build his program. His bait was that by coming to Delaware those players could take the field immediately rather than sitting out one year. The strategy worked. In only his second year in 2003 Keeler won the university’s sixth national title - and first on the field that was the result of polls. Only four players on the 61-man roster hailed from the First State.

One team where every member was a Delawarean was the Naamans Little League All-Stars who became the first Delaware team to play in the Little League World Series in 2002. The Brandywine Hundred youngsters bowed out in pool play. They would be followed to Williamsport by Newark National in

blank who suffered the same fate. A few levels higher up, Bob Hannah stopped coaching at the University of Delaware after 35 seasons in 2000. His teams had won 1,053 games, almost 70%, and he had mentored 23 All-Americans and 32 major league draft picks.

What Is It about the Number 96?

For many years the holder of the Delaware all-time major league home run crown was cut and dried. Dave May, born and raised in New Castle County, thumped 96 round- trippers in his career. But since the left- handed slugger left the game in 1978 things have not been so simple.

Enter Robert Randall Bush, born in Dover in 1958. But he was soon in Florida where he became an all-state outfielder for Carol City High in suburban Miami. After patrolling the outfield for the University of New Orleans Privateers Bush was a second round selection of the Minnesota Twins in the 1979 draft. He played an impressive 12 years with the Twins, got into World Series in 1987 and 1991 and once tied an American League record with seven consecutive pinch hits. Bush retired with a career .251 batting average and - 96home runs.

Then came John Steven Mabry, born in Wilmington in 1970. But Mabry played his high school ball down the Delmarva Peninsula at Bohemia Manor in Chesapeake City. College was at West Chester University for three years before the St. Louis Cardinals came calling with the sixth pick in the 1991 draft. Mabry also enjoyed a long major league career but it was no Randy Bush ride - he played for eight teams in 14 years after finishing 4th in Rookie of the Year voting in 1995. Mabry retired with a career .263 batting average - and 96 home runs.

So who is the real Delaware all-time home run king? Mabry had topped out at 96 home runs in fewer at bats (3409) than Bush (3481) and May (3670). But wait. before parsing through all kinds of statistics Paul Goldschmidt, born in Wilmington and raised in Texas, belted his 97th home run for the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2015. An unheralded eight round draft pick who has twice finished runner-up in the National League MVP voting, Goldschmidt had 116 career homers through his age 28 season.

So the player born in Delaware with the most career major league home runs is Paul Goldschmidt. Dave May hit the most major league home runs by a Delaware high school graduate. Does that clear anything up?

First State Sports Hero of the Decade: Elena Delle Donne

Elena Delle Donne first come to national attention for her proficiency at the most mundane of basketball tasks - shooting free throws. While at Ursuline Academy in 2005-2006 she set the girls’ national high school record for consecutive free throws made with 80. By the time she the wrapped up her secondary school career with her third straight state championship the nation was also aware what Delaware hoops fans already knew - the 6’5” Delle Donne could play basketball when all the players on the court were moving as well.

Delle Donne was the 2008 Naismith High School Player of the Year and the top-rated recruit in America and she chose the top-rated basketball program at the University of Connecticut. She made headlines again when she left Storrs after only two days of summer practice to come back to Delaware to be closer to her family, particularly her older sister Lizzie who was born deaf and blind with cerebral palsy. The Huskies were able to trundle on without their prized recruit. Geno Auriemma’s bunch won their first game of that 2008-2009 season and the next 89 after that to establish a collegiate record for consecutive wins. There were three consecutive national championships as well.

For her part, Delle Donne gave up basketball completely. Burned out and tired of the attention, she attempted a normal college experience by enrolling at the University of Delaware and walking on to the women’s volleyball team. She played middle hitter on a 19-15 squad that made the NCAA tournament.

But you can’t keep Secretariat in the barn forever. She came back to basketball as a red-shirt freshman and pumped in 26.7 points per game to finish third in the nation in scoring. She struggled through a sophomore season while battling the effects of Lyme disease but came back for her junior year to be the nation’s top score with 28.1 points per game. She shot .520 from the floor and pulled down over ten rebounds per game. After the season Delle Donne got her first taste of nternational ball by helping the Americans to a gold medal in the World University Games in Shenzhen, China with averages of 15.7 points and 14 rebounds per game.

In her senior year Delle Donne repeated as a United States Basketball Writers Association first team All-american and as an Academic All-American. She led the Blue Hens to a 27-3 regular season record and an unprecedented #6 seed in the Women’s Division I Basketball Tournament. Delaware made the Sweet Sixteen with an opening round win over West Virginia and 78-69 dispatching of #3 seed North Carolina. Both games were played in the Bob Carpenter Center on the Newark campus as the NCAA made the site selection decision a year earlier when Delle Donne announced she would not leave school early for the professional ranks of the WNBA.

The Blue Hens’ 2013 championship run ended the next week in Trenton’s Sun National Bank Arena when Delaware was dumped by #2 seeded Kentucky, 69-62. Delle Donne finished with 33 points, including 13 in a row to keep Delaware within striking distance in the first half. She finished her career as the fifth all-time leading scorer in NCAA history with 3,039 points and could easily have been the all-time top score had she not missed 22 games during her four years in college.

The Chicago Sky selected Elena Della Donne with the second pick in the 2013 WNBA Draft. She capped off a memorable rookie campaign by leading the Sky to a winning record for the first time in its eight-year existence and Chicago’s first-ever playoff appearance. In an eerie mirror of her collegiate career, Delle Donne was slowed by Lyme disease symptoms in her second season and Chicago once again slipped to a losing record. But the Sky qualified for the playoffs and Delle Donne returned to help Chicago reach the WNBA Finals where they lost three games to none to the Phoenix Mercury. Like in college, a healthy Delle Donne led the league in scoring in her third season with 23.4 points per game and was third in rebounding. When the media sat down to cast votes for league MVP, Delle Donne received 38 first place votes out of 39 ballots cast.

Elena Delle Donne had reached the pinnacle of her sport. But what about those free throws that had brought her so much fame in her early school years? Yes, she could still shoot those. In her first 77 games in the WNBA she went to the line 477 times and converted 448 for a career average of 93.9%. Long-time Phoenix Sun guard Steve Nash holds the all-time career free-throw percentage in that other professional basketball league - a measly 90.43%.

Pete Oakley Did What?

“Biggest upset in the history of the British Senior Open.” “Unknown wins Senior British.” “Little-known pro provides big-time shock.” Those were the headlines on the sports pages in July of 2004.

Florida-born Pete Oakley had accomplished quite a bit in his golfing years in the Mid-Atlantic region. Six Delaware Open titles between 19080 and 2000. A four-time Player of the Year for the Philadelphia Section of the PGA. A couple of Philadelphia Open championships. But his fame did not push much beyond Delaware Valley golf circles.

Oakley had considered trying the PGA Tour in his early twenties but realized quickly he was good, but not PGA Tour good. When he turned 50 in 1999 he began trying to qualify for the Senior Tour. He tried four times and missed four times. He won the PGA Senior Club Professional Championship for club pros that year but otherwise directed most of his attention to funding, designing and building a golf course in Milton with partner Chris Adkins in Milton. Oakley would tend to the golf matters and Adkins would handle the maintenance.

In 2004 his brother David talked Pete, then 55, into trying the European Senior Tour, mostly to keep him company. David Oakley had won four times in Europe. To join him Oakley had to survive a nervous qualifying tournament, aided by a skulled 8-iron on the ninth green that crashed into the pin and fell into the cup. By the time July rolled around there had been some success but not much. When he entered the qualifying tournament to get into the Senior British Open at Royal Portrush in Ireland Oakley figured that the 70 pounds for a caddy for one round was a bit steep so he pulled his own golf trolley around the course.

On the 10th hole a man named Mervyn Steed stepped out of the crowd and offered to pull Oakley’s cart for him. A 50-foot putt for birdie fell on that hole and Steed became Oakley’s caddie for the week when he secured one of the 20 available qualifying sports for the tournament. Oakley, whose natural ball flight is a low, boring shot, found the chilly and brisk conditions of Northern Ireland fit his game. He shot a one-over par 73 in the first round but a splendid 68 in the second round thrust him into contention. Another 73 in the third round gave Oakley the 54- hole lead.

On Championship Sunday Oakley seemed impervious to the pressure. Slight of build, Peter Alliss on ABC television remarked that he looked much like a butler on the course. Oakley made six birdies in the round and the last, a 25-footer on the 14th hole, gave him a three stroke cushion with four holes to play. But up ahead of him Tom Kite was shooting a final round 68 and Eduardo Romero, an eight-time winner on the European Tour who had just turned 50 that week to get into senior event, had fashioned a 67. Oakley would need to make par on the final hole to win the tournament and avoid a three-way playoff.

He drove well but his approach shot to the green came up shot and disappeared into a deep bunker. Without being able to see the flagstick from his position Oakley blasted out 12 feet past the hole. The putt was perfect and Pete Oakley, club pro from Delaware, had won the Senior British Open with a four-under par total of 284. “It was divine the way I putted this week,” Oakley, a spiritual man, said after the round.

His best previous finish on the American senior tour had been 35th, at the U.S. Senior Open in 2003. His best finish in Europe had been ninth. The $295,000 winner’s check was 12 times more than his best previous payday. No qualifier had ever won the Senior British Open before, let alone one who had been pulling his own clubs aroudn the course.

Besides the money there were perks, including a one-year exemption to play the Senior Tour in the United States. When Oakley arrived back in the United States - minus his golf clubs which the airline had lost - Arnold Palmer came up to him in the locker room at the U.S. Senior Open and congratulated him, telling “the unknown pro from Delaware” how proud he was of him. There were mobs of fans waiting to get his autograph.

Oakley took advantage of his year’s exemption on the Senior Tour to take off from the Rookery. He played 26 events, had a couple of Top Ten finishes and won $192,293. It was not enough to earn him additional time on Tour but he proved to himself that he could play at golf’s highest level.

His British Open championship won Oakley the right to return and defend his title in 2005. At Royal Aberdeen in Scotland he shot 82-80 to miss the cut. “I’m the luckiest guy I know,” he said afterwards. “I’m playing golf. The heck with the score. Life is good.” Tom Watson won that tournament, just like he had in 2003 so the names on the gold cup of the Senior British Open winners read: Tom Watson- Pete Oakley-Tom Watson.

Beware of What You Wish For

One small state. Two universities, playing at the same level of ball. One would think natural rivalry. In the case of Delaware and Delaware State one would be thinking wrongly. Throughout the 20th century the two teams, one white and richer and the other historically black and poorer, never met on the gridiron.

For most of its history since its founding in 1891 Delaware State was a small school with no program of consequence. But that began to change in the last decades of the 1900s as Delaware State moved into the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference and began competing at the same level as the University of Delaware. And eventually First State football fans, especially in Dover, wondered why the two schools never scheduled a football game.

The burden to play was on Delaware, which trotted out the same excuses for years - no flexibility in the scheduling, no one is that interested in playing Delaware State, the games would not be competitive, we play them in other sports. The rumblings grew louder in the mid-2000s until fate settled the matter for the schools. In 2007 coach Al Lavan led the Hornets to their sixth MEAC title with a school-record 10 wins. Delaware State was ranked as high as No, 10 in some regular season polls and earned their first berth in the NCAA playoffs. The first round opponents for the Hornets: the University of Delaware Blue Hens.

The historic game in Newark drew 19,765 fans - the largest in playoff history at Delaware Stadium and one of the biggest crowds ever for a 1-AA playoff game. ESPN showed up to televise the game nationally. Delaware State was the #10 seed in the tournament and Delaware the #13 but the game did not play out that way. Blue Hen running back Omar Cuff ripped off a school-record 288 yards - exactly twice as many as the entire Hornet offense could muster - and Delaware built a 44-0 lead after three quarters to coast to a 44-7 win. The Blue Hens advanced all the way to the finals before loosing to Appalachian State in Chattanooga.

Two years later Furman University dropped off the University of Delaware schedule just before the 2009 season and with a gaggle of state politicians and school officials announced that not only would Delaware State fill the date but there was a contract signed for an upcoming three- game series. A rivalry was hatched. Or at least one was tried to be manufactured. The Delaware-Delaware State game was given a name - the Route 1 Rivalry although the highway runs nowhere near the Newark campus.

News-Journal readers came up with a name for the trophy to be awarded the winner - The First State Cup and Derek Alexander of the Delaware Industries for the Blind designed the forty-inch high hardware with a walnut base that has room for each year’s winner to be engraved. All the trappings were in place for an in-state rivalry. But early returns on the field have not lived up to the hype.

The University of Delaware has won the first six games in the series by an average of 28.5 points. The Hornets have never been ahead at any point in any of the games. More dispiriting the crowds at Delaware Stadium - all the games have been played in Newark with its 22,000-seat capacity - have been some of the sparsest in years. There was uncertainty after the first contracted series ended whether the games would be continued but another four-game contract was signed for games from 2016 until 2020, with a break in 2018 for another evaluation. Football fans are hoping the two schools rediscover the passions that flared when they were not playing other have rekindled by then.

Little League World Series

In 2003, Naamans Little League was in its 46th year and Joe Mascelli had been in the dugout coaching for 36 of them. Heck, he had played in the league in its second year in 1958, when there just 4 teams and 60 boys and games were played at old Cohens Field at Naamans and Ebright roads not far from the highest point in the state.

Mascelli was once again in charge of the Naamans 12-year old All-Stars for the 2003 tournament season and was preparing for the Mid-Atlantic Region championship game at the A. Bartlett Giamanti Little League Leadership Training Center in Bristol, Connecticut where the winner would advance to the Little League World Series. Through the years Delaware teams had made it to this point many times: Newark National Little League in 1980, Brandywine Little League in 1988, 1989 and 1995, Newark American Little League in 1990 and Georgetown Little League in 1995. None made it to the Little League World Series.

Now it was Naamans’ turn. In the opposing dugout was the Pennsylvania champion from Lower Perkiomenville who had dealt Naamans its only loss in the round-robin tournament by plating a run in the bottom of the sixth to win 4-3. For the rematch Mascelli sent his best pitcher, Scott Daugherty to the hill. Daughtery had struck out 67 in 36 innings in the tournament but had been nicked by the Pennsylvania champs in his sole loss. In the second inning Ryan Dietrich solved Daugherty for a two-run homer to stake Lower Perkiomen to an early lead. But first baseman and lead-off hitter Dave Mastro clubbed a home run in the third inning to tie the game and third baseman Danny Frate connected inthe fourth inning to put Naamans ahead. Kip Skibick stroke a home run in the fifth and Mastro stroked another round-tripper in the sixth inning as Dougherty finished off the 7-3 win. Delaware would be making the drive up Route 15 to Williamsport for the first time.

Daugherty was back on the hill to throw the first Delaware pitches in a Little League World Series. Skibicki knocked in Vince Russomagno in the top of the first against Chandler National of Arizona but the West Champions exploded for four runs in the fifth inning to break open a tight contest, 5-1. Their next time out Naamans overcame four errors and a 7-3 deficit to score Delaware’s first-ever World Series win against Iowa. A wild fourth inning produced five hits and five runs and Mastro struck out seven of the final ten batters to seal the 8-7 triumph.

In front of a partisan Delaware in the win- or-go-home next game against Richmond, Texas Skibicki plowed through the Lone Star champions’ line-up the first time but the bats caught up to him in the fourth inning. Texas sent eleven batters to plate, rapped out seven hits and scored seven runs to advance and send Naamans out of the tournament with a 1-2 record.

In 2013, Newark National under the direction of coach John Ludman became the second Delaware Little League to represent the First State at the Little League World Series. It was the third straight state championship for Newark National, a feat accomplished only once before by Middletown-Odessa from 2007- 2009. and this time they stormed through the Mid-Atlantic Region Tournament with 52 runs in five games. In front of a crowd of 16,600 the big bats of Newark National roared immediately. In the top of the first Delaware used a run-scoring double by first baseman Eric Ludman, a two-run single by Jack Hardcastle and a booming triple by Ryan Miller to build a 5-0 lead which stood up for a 6-3 win over Urbandale, Iowa.

The tables were turned in the next game against the East Lake Little League of Chula Vista, California. Delaware was buried under the assault by the big bats of the West Region champions who used a Grant Holman walk-off grand slam over the trees in centerfield to seal a 15-3 decision ended by the 10-run rule. Newark National now faced the same must-win third game to continue in the World Series. Once again, however, the big Newark bats fell silent and Delaware bowed out of the tournament with a 10-0 loss, surrendering another grand slam and enduring another game stopped by the 10-run rule.

Going the Distance

When Doug White ran his first Caesar Rodney marathon in 1971 no one had ever heard the word “jogging.” No one ran for fun - if you were out running it was “roadwork.” Even White never ran at Dickinson High School or the University of Delaware. His passion back then was drag racing, a more common sight on Delaware streets than running shorts. When that hobby became too expensive he traded the burning rubber for running shoes.

A few years later White entered his first Boston Marathon. In 2015, at 72 years of age he completed his 42nd consecutive 26.2-mile Boston Marathon in 4:54:17. In his prime, when he logged over 4,000 miles a year on Delaware roads and tracks, that time was more than two hours faster. White had planned to stop his streak at 40 in the 2013 edition of the race but the bombings that year made it an unsatisfying conclusion to a storied career. So the streak continues. Another runner, Ben Beach, has a current streak six races longer.

White worked for New Castle County but devoted nearly as much time to organizing road races in Delaware. For over thirty years he put together a caravan for Delaware runners to get to the Boston Marathon. In 1978 White was in on the planning for Delaware’s first certified marathon, part of a training exercise for the military reservists called the Delaware National Guard Minuteman Marathon. White painstakingly measured the course along route 9 around Delaware City which included a trip across the Reedy Point Bridge. To avoid conflicts with more established road races the marathon the “first marathon in the first state” was scheduled for March 5, 1978. Six inches of snow fell on March 3 and race day remained frosty as the runners maneuvered between recently plowed snowdrifts. Running across the exposed 135-foot high bridge in 26-degree temperatures with whipping winds caused considerable gnashing of teeth.

The Minuteman Marathon attracted 178 runners and 114 completed the course. Twenty-five year old Dover Air Force Base High School graduate Dan Rincon won the race in a time of 2:30:02 and 14-year old Debbie Parks paced the women with a time of 3:17:47. Each won a color television. The organizers tried again in 1980, this time in May. Despite being greeted by a spring heat wave 238 runners finished the race but there would be no more Delaware Minuteman marathons.

Downstate, the Lewes Seashore Marathon started in November 1978 with White besting a field of 67 runners and 3 finishers. The low-profile Lewes race continued for 11 years and one of its noted winners was Gary Fanelli who ran races in costume, often as a Blues Brothers character. He represented American Samoa in the 1988 Seoul Olympics. In the 1990s the the Delaware Schweizer’s Marathon was staged in Middletown for several years.

Those fits and starts were so 20th century. In the 2000s Delaware runners have typically been able to pick from at least a half-dozen marathons up and down the state. The Delaware Marathon Running Festival began in 2004 and is a qualifying race for the Boston Marathon as it winds from the Wilmington waterfront to Brandywine Park. The Delaware Trail Marathon makes two scenic loops

through White Clay Creek State Park near Newark. The Monster Mash Marathon is another Boston qualifier that starts with a lap around the track at the Dover International Speedway before heading off into the historic state capital. The Trap Pond Marathon is another trail run through Delaware’s first state park. The Coastal Delaware Running Festival is favorite for PRs (personal records) as the flat course pads through the paved roads of historic Fort Miles in Cape Henlopen State Park before finishing in Dewey Beach. In December the Rehoboth Beach Marathon always fills its 1200 marathon slots and 1700 half-marathon registrations. No wonder Doug White is closing in on 100,000 miles of competition.