By Andy Walter

CAMDEN — The decision to have an open Class 3A state tournament was made long before Caesar Rodney High’s football team lost all 10 of its games.

So it’s not like the Riders twisted anyone’s arm to let them be part of the tourney.

And they’re going to do everything in their power to try to pull off what would have to be considered the tournament’s biggest upset of all time.

“I’m happy for the opportunity to play another game,” said CR coach Dan Candeloro. “Obviously, there’s going to be people that say, what’s a 1-9 and an 0-10 and a 2-8 team getting into the playoffs for? Well, that’s just the way it is.

“It was set up before. And we’ll try to seize the opportunity to shock Delaware football. I’m happy for our team because they get another game.”

It will certainly be a new era in Delaware’s football state tournament history when two of three DIAA football state tourneys get started this weekend. (Class 1A doesn’t start until the following weekend).

There are now three tournament classes, instead of two, with three state champions slated to be crowned on Dec. 11.

A total of six teams with losing records made the playoffs. In Class 3A, which includes the state’s 11 largest programs, everyone made the tournament.

That includes CR, Cape Henlopen and Hodgson, which are a combined 3-27 this fall.

On Friday night, the 11th-seeded Riders go to Georgetown to face No. 6 Sussex Central (5-5) at 7 p.m. in Class 3A’s first of four rounds. The Golden Knights won the Division I state crown a year ago.

If there’s a reason for CR’s players to have a little hope, it’s the fact that they just played Central last Friday and trailed only 7-6 at halftime. The Knights took over in the second half and won 42-6.

“If we put in a full game, we can play with them,” said Candeloro. “I mean we showed that in the first half. It’s not like it was lopsided right from the jump. We know if we play 48 minutes, nothing’s guaranteed, but it should be a better game.”

The Riders have actually played some good stretches in games during the season.

They also trailed only 9-8 at halftime against Salesianum and were scoreless after two quarters against Appoquinimink. CR ended up losing only 6-0 to the Jaguars as well as falling just 14-7 to Cape Henlopen after missing a chance to win the game in the closing minutes.

The Riders have scored only 54 points this season, the fewest for any team that played more than seven games in the state.
Candeloro said he knew this was going to be a rebuilding season for CR after going 5-2 last fall.

“We’re 10 games in, so you can’t use that (being young) as an excuse,” he said. “But surely there was a learning curve early on. We had to move some key people around early and hopefully found where we need to be now.

“We have a lot of younger kids playing. We’re just trying to gain experience every game still. Coming into this year we knew, offensively, things were going to be rough. We had some good skill (players), we just had to find those five up front.

“I think we have zeroed in on where we want to be,” Candeloro added.

Since 2013, CR has been in the state tournament only once. The Riders lost to Hodgson in 2017 in their last appearance.

Candeloro said he’d love to get this group of players at least one victory this fall. He said it’s a good bunch of kids, with as many as 75 varsity players still coming out to practice.

“Obviously, everybody wants to win,” said Candeloro. “There’s always rough years. But I was saying to our staff, we’re winless but we’ve still got 75 kids out to practice so that tells you something about our mindset. No one’s giving up.

“It kind of makes things feel a little better — that we’re still fighting on week 10, winless.”

Given CR’s first-half success at times, Candeloro jokes that maybe he just needs to come up with a better halftime speech.
All season, though, the goal has been to being playing well at the end of the season.

“We just wanted to prepare and play our best football by Week 11,” said Candeloro. “That’s where we’re at. ... We just have to figure out how to put a full game together.”

Extra points

Delmar hosts Newark on Friday night in Class 2A in what is probably the first tournament meeting between the two programs. The Wildcats and Yellowjackets have won 17 state titles between them. ... Cape Henlopen, which plays a Class 3A game at Appoquinimink (5-5) on Saturday at 7 p.m., is in the tourney for the first time since 2012. The Vikings haven’t won a tournament game since prior to 2008. ... Twenty-two of the state’s 45 teams finished the regular season with winning records under the state’s new classification. Five more squads were .500.