Delaware
Who is Delaware’s all-time best high school football player? VOTE now
Delaware has had no shortage of football players who excelled at the high school level, sparking their teams and earning fans’ admiration.
The best of them went on to collegiate and pro success.
With the United States nearing its 250th anniversary of gaining independence, USA TODAY Sports will celebrate the 250 greatest American sports figures of all time.
At the root of that are the high school athletes who became familiar names in their schools, communities and the state of Delaware while making headlines with their athletic exploits. The USA TODAY Network hopes to first spotlight those individuals.
Here in Delaware, we’re compiling lists of the best players in several sports. We begin with football, which has long garnered the most attention.
These are our choices for Delaware’s 10 greatest football players, listed alphabetically:
Jamie Duncan, Christiana
Duncan was a central figure in Christiana’s rise to power. He was 1992 state Defensive Player of the Year after also being first-team All-State at linebacker as a junior in 1991. He also starred as a tight end and running back. At Vanderbilt, he was a second-team All-American linebacker in 1997 and made 425 career tackles while earning SEC Defensive Player of the Year. Duncan then appeared in 96 NFL games with 56 starts over seven seasons.
Chris Godwin, Middletown
The wide receiver sparked Middletown to the 2011 and 2012 state titles and was a state Player of the Year honoree. He then starred at Penn State, catching 154 passes for 2,421 yards and 18 TDs. He was a third-round 2017 draft pick of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Godwin was All-Pro in 2019 and won the Super Bowl after the 2020 season. He’s caught 612 passes for 7,626 yards and 41 touchdowns in nine NFL seasons, all with the Bucs.
Duron Harmon, Caesar Rodney
Harmon was state Defensive Player of the Year while sparking the Riders to the 2008 state championship. He then played in 50 games at Rutgers, starting his last two seasons and intercepting six passes while earning All-Big East at safety. Harmon was then a key part of the New England Patriots’ secondary, spending seven of his 11 seasons there and winning three Super Bowls. He played in 168 NFL games and had 24 interceptions.
Kwame Harris, Newark
Harris was the state’s most heavily recruited high school football player ever while being a three-time first-team All-Stater and Lineman of the Year. He went to Stanford and was a three-year starter and first-team All-Pac 10 choice as a senior. Harris was a first-round draft pick, 26th overall, by the 49ers and played 86 games with 55 starts in six NFL seasons.
Bilal Nichols. Hodgson
Nichols was All-State as both a defensive lineman and tight end for the Silver Eagles. He then was a three-time All-Colonial Athletic Association choice at Delaware, making 104 career tackles, with 17½ for lost yardage, in 44 games, along with three forced fumbles, two interceptions and several blocked kicks. The Bears chose him in the fifth round of the 2018 draft. Nichols has now played in 104 NFL games with 88 starts for Chicago, Las Vegas and Arizona.
Brian O’Neill, Salesianum
O’Neill was a first-team All-State defensive end at Salesianum and recruited to Pittsburgh as a tight end, which he also played at Sallies. O’Neill moved to offensive tackle as a red-shirt freshman and ended up starting 37 games from 2015-17 and was first-team All-Atlantic Coast Conference as a senior. A second-round 2018 draft choice, O’Neill has been the Vikings’ starting right tackle ever since.
Luke Petitgout, Sussex Central
Petitgout parlayed his stellar career with the Golden Knights into a scholarship to Notre Dame, where he started his last two years at offensive tackle. Chosen 19th overall by the Giants in the 1999 NFL Draft, Petitgout played in 117 NFL games with 110 starts over eight years with New York and another with Tampa Bay.
Darnell Savage, Caravel
Savage bounced back from a broken leg that cost him most of his junior season to rush for 1,298 yards and 13 touchdowns and make 54 tackles as a Caravel senior. He then started every game in the Maryland secondary from the season finale of his freshman year through his senior season, intercepting eight passes and making 182 tackles. He was then a first-round pick, 21st overall, in the 2019 NFL Draft by the Green Bay Packers. Savage has played in 97 NFL games with 83 starts in seven seasons, the first five with the Packers, and intercepted 10 passes.
Steve Watson, Saint Mark’s
Watson was a first-team All-State wide receiver for the Spartans’ 12-0 1974 state championship team. He then starred at Temple, catching 98 passes for a then-school-record 1,629 yards from 1975-78. The free-agent signee then had a prolific pro career with the Denver Broncos, making the Pro Bowl after the 1981 season, when his 13 touchdown catches led the NFL, and winning the Super Bowl after the 1987 season. Watson’s 353 career catches netted 6,112 yards and 36 touchdowns.
Randy White, McKean
White was just a second-team All-State running back at McKean High, though he also excelled on defense for the Highlanders. He then became a College Football Hall of Famer at Maryland and a Pro Football Hall of Famer with the Dallas Cowboys. The defensive end won the Outland Trophy as college football’s top lineman in 1974. Drafted second overall by Dallas, he was a 9-time Pro Bowl pick in 14 NFL seasons, getting 111 sacks in 209 games. White was MVP of the Cowboys’ Super Bowl XII win.
USA TODAY 250 for 250: Who do you think is the best of the best?
Contact Kevin Tresolini at ktresolini@delawareonline.com and follow on Twitter @kevintresolini. Support local journalism by subscribing to delawareonline.com and our DE Game Day newsletter.
4-minute read
Mike Purzycki, two-term Wilmington mayor, dies
Mike Purzycki, who remade the Wilmington Riverfront and was elected twice as the city’s mayor, has died.
Mike Purzycki died Tuesday, May 19 at 80. The public record of his life — the Riverfront, the mayoralty, the housing reforms, the man who turned an industrial wasteland into a regional destination — is real and earned. We read it Tuesday morning. We recognize the city Purzycki helped to build.
There is another piece of Purzycki’s life, less public and to us no less important, that the three of us are uniquely positioned to tell. I, Tony Allen, served as the founding chair of the Wilmington HOPE Commission, and Mike served as my co-chair throughout my tenure. With first Provey Powell and then Charles A. Madden as our executive director, and Wolfie Chambers as one of our most important volunteers and advisors — now one of the nation’s leading voices on second chances and gun violence prevention — we built something together that does not appear in the public chronology of Purzycki’s life. The moment of his passing is the right moment to name it.
We come to this tribute from three vantage points: a returning citizen turned national advocate, the executive director who ran the institution day to day, and the co-chair who sat with Purzycki at a round table, grappling with the difficult topics that carried their own advocates and opponents on every side — race, community, crime, brokenness, repair and whole cloth reform — we dealt with it all and then went about the business of trying to do something about it. The relationship the three of us had with Purzycki was an argument we kept choosing to have in the same room. He pushed us. We pushed him. Individually, we all held positions about structural injustice that sometimes made each of us bristle, one to another. Regardless of what side we landed, no one flinched. That is what made the work real, and what makes this tribute possible.
We want to honor Purzycki honestly. He was not a man so certain about Black people that he believed he knew what was best for us. He would have been the first to reject that framing on its facing, noting first that no group of people is a monolith, nor is one group superior in their judgement of another. It was the systems that created the circumstances, a point we all regularly rallied around. Purzycki was our ally — and on some days, our co-conspirator in a fight no one in his world was asking him to take up.
Wolfie Chambers remembers Mike Purzycki
I have been called “the Mayor of Wilmington” in some quarters, and I take no offense to it, but I want to be clear about the chronology. By the time the HOPE Commission and Mike Purzycki entered my life, I had already come home and decided who I was going to become. The Center for Structural Equity I founded at the University of Delaware in 2020. The federal legislation I helped shape. The book I wrote on violence in our city. The presidential pardon I received in January 2025. None of that was given to me. I built it, with the help of many — and Purzycki was one of those many, not the architect of it.
Purzycki never saw the man in front of him as broken. He assumed I was a partner. The first real conversation he and I had, he did not ask me about my time inside. He asked me what I thought the commission was getting wrong. I told him. He disagreed with me on several points, and we went around on it for the better part of an hour. That was the day I knew I could work with him.
We argued over the years about a great deal. About whether young men in our neighborhoods were primarily victims of a system or co-authors of the conditions they lived in — both, of course, but the weighting was a real fight. About how hard to push law enforcement, particularly later when he was mayor and accountability for police conduct sat on his desk. About what counted as success when a man came home. About who got the credit and who got the microphone. Purzycki did not always win those arguments. Neither did I. That is how I know he respected me. It was two men — one Black, one white — who could argue without feeling the need to break each other. As some young people used to say, “Mike was a real one,” even when we simply could not agree.
Charles A. Madden rememebrs Mike Purzycki
I ran the HOPE Commission for many years. For most of that time, I had two co-chairs at the top of the house — Tony Allen and Mike Purzycki — and the way that worked was the engine of everything we built. And while the HOPE Commission brought us together, it was Purzycki the man who has meant so much to my personal and professional development. We spent countless hours together creating countless memories and mutual lessons. What centers my relationship with Purzycki is the fact that he cared about me (the whole person). He fought for me both figuratively and literally AND helped shape the man, the father and professional I am becoming. During a car ride from his home in Maryland, I turned to Purzycki and called him a “painful” man. To be clear, my saying as much was truly a compliment. In fact, his “painful” way is the very reason I hold him in such high regard. The “painful” man expected and demanded excellence from me while modeling as much in our every interaction. I will miss Purzycki painful way of caring and showing up for me in ways few men have.
They did not always see the same problem when they looked at the same room. Allen came from the Urban League, from a public-policy lineage that ran through high profile elected officials, from stout academic grounding in Urban Affairs. PUrzycki came from real estate. He had built the Riverfront. He thought in terms of capital stacks, development timelines,and the leverage of public investment against private return. They had different vocabularies, and a lot of my job was translating between them — and then, when they had argued each other into a synthesis neither would have arrived at alone, helping the staff turn it into a program.
Purzycki pushed me on accountability — on whether we were measuring results, on whether the men we served were being asked enough of themselves, on whether we were too forgiving. I pushed him on context — on what it actually takes to come home to a city that has decided in advance you will fail, on the systems that produce the men we were serving, on the difference between mercy and infantilization. We did not always agree about where the line was. We agreed it had to be drawn together.
He was the rare leader who showed up when there was nothing for him to gain. He was the rare white civic leader who did not flinch when the conversation got harder than his comfort. He was wrong sometimes, and he could be told so to his face. That is a different gift than benevolence.
Mike’s work on reentry was never the work that won him votes. It was never the work that drew the press. It was the work he did anyway. That tells you what he was made of.
Tony Allen remembers Mike Purzycki
I co-chaired the Wilmington HOPE Commission with Mike Purzycki for many years. The hours we logged together at the head of that table are the foundation of what I want to say.
I came to that role from a particular vantage point, a student of W.E.B. Du Bois recognizing both privilege and responsibility in my Black community with Frederick Douglass type sensibilities, in effect that “power concedes nothing without demand.” That double inheritance made me right about nothing. But holding both worldviews in equal measure did teach me the texture of the long argument: that real civic work is not about who is correct in the moment, but about who is still in the room five, 10, 15, 25 years later, not still asking the harder question, but rather the hardest question and never giving up on the work.
Purzycki was such a man.
Our work together with Charles A. Madden, our board and at the prodding of known voices like Wolfie Chambers produced specific things. The expansion of resources into Southbridge — a family crisis therapist at the elementary school, a juvenile probation officer dedicated to the community, outreach workers — of the community — on the ground, and constant advocacy for what many thought of as the forgotten or worse yet, the unworthy. Perhaps most important was a home, the Achievement Center, built with an iconic American black fraternity, Kappa Alpha Psi, that gave our work visible, physical agency, that still shapes the function, face and work of the HOPE Commission today, still anchored in Wilmington but now spread to Dover under the leadership of state Sen. Darius Brown. All of it was instinct meeting investment, under intense pressure, with many competing views. Dare I say, “out of many, ONE!”
But the deeper thing — the thing I have come back to often, and will come back to more now — was something Reverend Lawrence Livingston named in a Delaware Today profile of Black leadership in our state a decade ago. He said that effective leadership in our community is about being “Black enough.” And he defined the term this way: “If you can understand the nature of oppression, whether you are white, Hispanic, or any other ethnicity, then you are Black enough.”
I have thought about that line in relation to Mike many times. He understood the nature of oppression — not as a thing he had experienced, but as a thing he had decided to know. He read it in the data. He heard it in the rooms. He sat with it in the lives of the men our Commission served. He let it change what he believed and how he led. He never claimed our experience as his. He never confused empathy with equivalence. I would not parse these words to ever say my dear friend Purzycki was “Black enough,” but he was enough and there when we all needed him most.
Legendary state Sen. Margaret Rose Henry once observed that the work of civil rights in our generation has shifted from voting rights and equal housing to economic justice, and that our leadership now extends to a broader and more economically driven community. Purzycki lived inside that shift. The Riverfront. The Achievement Center. The mayoralty. They were of a piece — investments in a city whose economic future and whose racial reckoning could no longer be separated.
That is the man I was proud to lead beside. That is the man whose absence I will feel for a long time.
Together, we remember Mike Purzykci
We are not writing a hagiography. Mike Purzycki’s record, like every public servant’s, is a mixed one, and the three of us hold our own critiques of pieces of it. We argued with him in his lifetime. We will continue those conversations now in his memory, because he would have wanted us to.
What we are saying is narrower and more durable than tribute. On the question of what a city owes the men it has sent away — and what those men owe themselves — Purzycki showed up for the long argument, did not flinch from the parts of it that were uncomfortable for him and built, with us, something that did not exist before.
In the by and by, achievements are fleeting, but the legacy of the Honorable Michael S. Purzycki endures.
To Bette, to Gage, to Adriane, to Mick, to his grandchildren — we share your grief. The man you loved at home was the same man with whom we went to battle, together, the same man who built a piece of this city that forever will stand. We loved him, too. We will miss him.
Darryl “Wolfie” Chambers is the founder of the Center for Structural Equity. Charles A. Madden is the former executive director of the Wilmington HOPE Commission. Tony Allen is the president of Delaware State University.
$30K Millsboro police misconduct settlement reveals new details
Millsboro paid a $30,000 settlement, a Freedom of Information Act request revealed.
The rate of “takeover” events in Delaware appears to be going up with the temperature, with recent incidents in all three counties.
“Takeover” events are typically shared via social media, which results in large gatherings of young people that sometimes require a police response.
The evening of May 19, six police agencies in at least 10 vehicles responded to the area of the bandstand in Rehoboth Beach for such an event and now, four Delaware State University students are wanted for inciting a riot.
The Rehoboth “takeover” event was advertised to take place on the beach and boardwalk, according to Rehoboth Beach Police Department spokesman Mark Sweet, but police had “minimal advance notice.”
“As the event grew, additional resources from the area to include the Delaware State Police, the Department of Natural Resources, Dewey Beach Police, Milford Police, Lewes Police and Bethany Beach Police, responded to growing concerns over the safety of people and property,” Sweet said in a statement.
He did not say how many people attended the event or how many were arrested, but said charges included disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, underage consumption and marijuana use in a public space, he said.
Multiple business owners in the beach block of Rehoboth Avenue said there were at least a hundred people at the event and at least one business closed early.
The event was the fifth “takeover” this year, Sweet said, and the people responsible have previously promoted similar events in Rehoboth.
Police are actively looking for the four Delaware State University students, Sweet said, to charge them with conspiracy and intent to commit or facilitate a riot, both felonies. The suspects are ages 19 to 22.
“At this time, there is no known danger to the public and we will continue to monitor future events to ensure the safety of our residents, visitors, business owners, employees, and their property,” Sweet said. “We will take the necessary actions to keep the peace and good order of the City of Rehoboth Beach so that all may enjoy everything the City has to offer.”
The Ice Cream Store is located at 6 Rehoboth Ave. Owner Chip Hearn said his employees had no problems and witnessed no crimes.
“But they’re not out there watching, they’re serving customers,” Hearn said. “I thought police handled it extremely well.”
What’s a junebug?
Large groups of students, typically high school- or, increasingly, college-age, often gather at the Delaware beaches at this time of year. Seniors come to celebrate graduation, and locals call them “junebugs.”
Dewey Beach, especially, has long dealt with the issue.
“Oftentimes underage kids are at a loss for structured activities and they end up loitering outside bars and other restricted venues,” Dewey Beach Police Chief Constance Speake said in a 2024 town newsletter. “Some bring alcohol in back packs and gather on the beach.”
All of Delaware’s ocean beach towns have a curfew. Rehoboth, Dewey and Bethany beaches all have an 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew for those younger than 18. Fenwick Island’s curfew is midnight to 6 a.m.
Rehoboth was the last to institute a curfew, in 2025, and the only one to issue any curfew violations last year. In nine separate incidents, 21 civil citations were issued, 10 of which were for juveniles under the age of 16, according to Sweet.
The context
Large gatherings of students haven’t been confined to the beaches recently, though.
Six teens were arrested at the Christiana Fashion Center May 16 after police responded to reports of 100 juveniles fighting in the parking lot. They were charged with disorderly conduct and other offenses.
In Kent County, public parks closed multiple times in April to prevent such gatherings.
In Smyrna, George C. Wright Jr. Municipal Park closed early April 24 due to a planned, unpermitted party, the Smyrna Police Department said in a Facebook post.
Kent County Parks & Recreation closed three parks earlier in April “due to credible reports of large, unsanctioned gatherings,” a social media post said.
The closures were made out of precaution because past parties have resulted in vandalism and large amounts of trash, Kent Department of Community Services Director Jeremy Sheppard said.
Reach Shannon Marvel McNaught at smcnaught@gannett.com or on Facebook.
Revised recreational fishing regulations for bluefish give anglers a larger daily possession limit. /Delaware DNREC graphic: Duane Raver Jr.
The Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control has revised Delaware’s fishing regulations for bluefish to benefit recreational anglers, with the daily possession limit for 2026 and 2027 increased from three to five bluefish for anglers fishing from private vessels and from shore, with the limit for anglers aboard for-hire vessels raised from five to seven bluefish a day. The regulatory change from DNREC – now in effect – also ensures the state’s compliance with regional fisheries management plans.
The action taken by Delaware on bluefish adopts management measures approved by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council (MAFMC) and Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) Bluefish Management Board in 2025. Both entities reviewed the 2025 management track assessment for the species, which found that bluefish overfishing was not occurring. They also recognized that while the stock was not overfished, it was not yet fully rebuilt to the biomass target the fisheries management bodies had set.
Spawning stock biomass was estimated to be about 89% of the biomass target in 2024, with stock projections that it will have reached rebuilt status in 2025, though awaiting confirmation in the 2027 stock assessment.
Based on the positive trajectory for the stock, the MAFMC and ASMFC adopted a recreational harvest limit (RHL) for bluefish of 22.02 million pounds for 2026, and of 22.50 million pounds RHL for 2027. Compared to 2025, these values represent an increase of approximately 40% for the RHL – resulting in Delaware raising the daily possession limit for bluefish in 2026 and 2027.
For more information on this and other fishing regulations, see the online 2026 Delaware Fishing Guide.
About DNREC
The Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control protects and manages the state’s natural resources, protects public health, provides outdoor recreational opportunities, and educates Delawareans about the environment. The DNREC Division of Fish and Wildlife conserves and manages Delaware’s fish and wildlife and their habitats, and provides fishing, hunting, wildlife viewing and boating access on more than 75,000 acres of public land owned or managed by the Division of Fish and Wildlife. For more information, visit the website and connect with @DelawareDNREC on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, X, YouTube or LinkedIn.
Media Contacts: Michael Globetti, michael.globetti@delaware.gov; Nikki Lavoie, nikki.lavoie@delaware.gov
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