December 17

In Quarryville with Jenny on Saturday morning, after lunch we came back to the city. The Pennsylvania Class AA championship football game was played on this day, for the second time in three years the Lancaster Catholic Crusaders earned gold with a 17-7 victory. The game was televised, we saw the end of it once we were back in town. This championship win for LCHS caps a 16-0 season, over the past three seasons the club's record is an incredible 42-2. The program will face new challenges in 2012 as it moves up to Class AAA in terms of enrollment and into Section One of the LL League. The competition will be exponentially tougher as a result but the Crusader program is very strong, there's no reason to think they won't be able to hold their own. Later in the afternoon we were on the road to Reading as the Royals finished their four-game miniseries with the Wheeling Nailers. After a 6-3 road win on Friday the Royals finally broke through at home by an identical count of 6-3. It was Teddy Bear Toss night for the benefit of Toys For Tots, the United States Marine Corps ROTC helped to collect the donations when the first goal was scored. Dale Mitchell scored the "teddy bear" goal in the fourth minute of play so we got it out of the way quickly, it was the first of his two scores in the game. Yannick Tifu also hit the net twice, newcomers Todd Griffith and Andrew Favot added single tallies in support of winning goaltender Mark Owuya. The win ends a six-game winless streak at home as the overall record improves to 10-12-5, the next home game is on Wednesday the 28th. As we were downtown at the Sovereign Center the McCaskey boys were at Reading High for the first of four games I will miss this season. Later in the evening I saw on the internet where JPM lost 77-76. That drops the club's mark to 2-2, the boys play at home on Tuesday against Elizabethtown. Take care, thanks for reading.