Dave Frederick

The Boardwalk at the top of Rehoboth Avenue in Rehoboth Beach was teeming with runners on New Year’s Eve, as 460 hale and hearty souls braved the cold and wind for the 21st annual Race Into the New Year. “It’s the biggest turnout we’ve ever had for...

Bad Bunny and Snoop Dogg - Where do little melons go in the summertime? John Cougar’s Mellencamp. I watched John Mellencamp interviewed on Real Time with Bill Maher. The 74-year-old grizzled rocker showed up in a plain-white T-shirt and flophouse...

Shiny happy people running - Cape’s 4-by-800-meter indoor relay team that placed third in the state showed up happy March 14 for the Shamrock Shuffle Half-Marathon relay at Cape Henlopen State Park. The running order at the state meet was Logan...

Max factor - I don’t bash referees, but to claim they aren’t a factor in a game (pick your sport) is preposterous, even ludicrous. There is no game without them, yet fans who know all the rules bark at them incessantly from the stands. I have become...

Travels with Fredman - Forty-four years ago, with the sound of typewriter keys pounding out copy as a backdrop, I walked into the Whale newspaper’s office with a sports column written in cursive on a yellow tablet. I considered calling it Travels with Fredman, building in the flexibility to write about my life covering sports, but in a spontaneous, nondeliberative moment, I chose People in Sports. On Tuesday, I got a text from granddaughter Lizzie, who coaches the Fred Thomas girls’ lacrosse team along with her Temple teammate Taylor Gibbs.

Travels with Fredman - Forty-four years ago, with the sound of typewriter keys pounding out copy as a backdrop, I walked into the Whale newspaper’s office with a sports column written in cursive on a yellow tablet. I considered calling it Travels...

Primetime Cape cousins - Ella Rishko and Mikey Frederick are first cousins. They were the male and female Cape Athletes of the Year in 2022. Mikey went on to play lacrosse four years at Mercer University, scoring more than 100 career points and leading the team in 2026. Ella played lacrosse two years at Virginia Tech before transferring to Delaware where she lit it up, becoming the first Blue Hen to score 50 goals in a single season (2026) since 1994. Sister Lulu is also on the Delaware team, and she is no joke either.

The Cape girls' lacrosse team closed out the regular season May 13 at Champions Stadium, defeating Milford 17-5 while honoring seven graduating seniors.  Cape enters the Friday, May 15 DIAA postseason tournament seeding meeting with a record of 13-2 and a likely top-four seed. The top four receive a double bye and will not play until hosting a quarterfinal game Saturday, May 23.   Milford closed out the season with a record of 8-6 and will likely get a tournament bid.

Cape senior Claire Lopez entered the May 23 quarterfinal lacrosse playoff versus Wilmington Friends slightly hobbled with a wrapped thigh. Conditions on the field turf were dreary and drizzly.  Lopez responded with a six-point first half, scoring three goals and dishing off three assists as Cape surged to a 14-2 halftime lead and cruised home cautiously to win 18-6. 

Longtime Cape coach Bill Geppert died over the weekend. He had just turned 60. He's been part of the Cape community for decades and has played a big part in so many people's lives over the years.  I knew Bill for a long time over snippets of time as a teaching colleague and sports reporter who knew him as Coach Gep and a dad of Will and Marlee, and husband to Molli. We were both more football guys who pretended to understand field hockey. Actually, we didn’t pretend, we'd just shrug if we came face to face after a close game.