By Andy Walter

NEWARK — John Wells has been here before, of course.

When his Sussex Central High softball squad fell to Caravel, 2-0, in the DIAA state championship game on Friday night, it was the fifth time in seven tries that the Golden Knights lost to the Buccaneers in the finals.

Wells, Central’s veteran coach, said he believes private schools like Caravel definitely have an advantage when it comes to building athletic programs.

“We like to play at the highest level,” he said. “We’ve got what we’ve got. We’ve got the kids that live in our area and we’re going against a private school that they’re always going to be at the top.

“When’s the last time they’ve not been here? How many times in my 30 years of coaching softball has Caravel not been in the finals? A handful.

“It’s not rocket science,” he continued. “How many coaches have come through? It’s not hard to figure out. They all do a good job, each coach that’s come in there. The playing field is what it is.

“We don’t make excuses. That’s why we beat them twice for state championships. It’s back to the grind. The bar is high, so you’ve got to get after it.”

For the record, Caravel has reached the softball state title game 23 times since 1991, winning 14 of them. Since 1999, the Buccaneers have been in 22 out of 25 state finals.

And Caravel has kept that run going through four different head coaches.
But, of course, Caravel is just one example of how private schools dominate DIAA state championships in Delaware.

In the 2023-24 school year that ended on Saturday, private schools captured 25 of the DIAA’s 34 state team titles (not counting Unified ones).

Salesianum’s James Gray and the umpire appear to agree on the call that he stole third base safely in Saturday night’s DIAA state championship …

Only seven traditional public schools — including six from the Henlopen Conference — won a state championship. Cape Henlopen, with two titles, was the only public school to win multiple crowns.

Clearly, the demise of New Castle County’s public-school system plays a big role in the situation. Schools that once had highly-successful teams in multiple sports are now barely competitive.

Middletown was the northern-most traditional public school to win a state title this year.

Not surprisingly, Salesianum — the all-boys Catholic school that puts a great deal of money into athletics — won the most state championships this school year. The Sals won state titles in nine of the 13 DIAA-sponsored sports they are eligible for.

A few of Sallies’ programs are now considered national caliber, with its boys’ lacrosse team currently ranked No. 6 in the country.

Tatnall, with its highly-regarded running program, won five state titles this year with Caravel earning three.

Of course, there are also traditional public schools that dominate in certain sports, too. Cape Henlopen just won its 14th girls’ lacrosse state title in the past 15 seasons while the Vikings and Delmar have combined to win 19 of the last 20 state crowns in Division I and II field hockey.

Delaware being a state with school choice also plays a role in all this. There’s no publicly available stats that show how many student-athletes are choice students or live out of state.

The First State is hardly the only state where there are debates over whether public and private schools should compete for the same state championship. Different states have come up with different plans to try to make the situation more equitable.

For now, though, there are no signs of any major changes in Delaware.

All-star time

June is a big month for high school senior all-star games in Delaware.

Here’s the ones on the schedule:

• Boys’/Girls’ soccer: Blue-Gold All-Star Games will be held on June 8 at Cape Henlopen. The boys’ contest starts at 4 p.m. with the girls’ game slated for 6 p.m.
• Boys’/Girls’ lacrosse: All-Star games will be held for both on June 11 at DE Turf Complex in Frederica. The girls’ contest is scheduled for 5 p.m. with the boys’ contest to follow.
• Baseball: The 46th annual Bob Colburn Blue-Gold All-Star Game will be played on June 12 at 6 p.m. at Frawley Stadium.
• Softball: The Blue-Gold Game will be played on June 12 at Red Lion Christian Academy. There will be a skills challenge at 5:30 p.m. with the nine-inning game to follow.
• Football: The 68th annual Blue-Gold All-Star Football Game will be played on June 21 at Delaware Stadium at 7 p.m. On June 19, the Gold team will scrimmage at Milford with the Blue team scrimmaging at Caravel. Both sessions start at 5 p.m.
• Chip shot
• This year was the third season that the DIAA split up the individual golf state championships into a boys’ and girls’ division.
• The eight-under par, two-day total of 136 turned by girls’ champion Sarah Lydic of Indian River was 11 shots better than the boys’ winning score of 147. If there was only one division, it would have been the seventh time in the last eight seasons that a female player — competing on a shorter course — would have had the best score.
• Both male and female players’ scores still count in the team standings. Of the seven scores that counted over two days for state champion Archmere, four came from female players.
• Extra points
• Sixteen of DIAA’s approximately 50 member schools won a state title this past school year.
• Most high school football teams in the state are holding non-contact ‘mini-camps’ this week as they start to prepapare for the ‘24 season.
• Smyrna senior soccer standout Desiree Zapata reached a big milestone at the end of her high school career, reaching 102 goals with 19 assists.
• Unfortunately, Zapata tore her ACL in the Eagles’ season finale. With college soccer played in the fall, she’ll have to redshirt her first season at Villanova.
• The Cape Henlopen High boys’ lacrosse team is 48-18 over the last four seasons with eight of those losses coming to Sallies and eight more coming against out-of-state teams.
• The next regular-season high school sporting event might be on Aug. 29 when a handful of Henlopen Conference teams are playing their season openers.
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