February 13-14

The chilly, blustery conditions continued on Monday, on Tuesday Jenny and I met for lunch since she was in town on business. In the evening it was the opening round of league playoffs as the Red Tornado played at Lampeter-Strasburg in a quarterfinal matchup, LS earned the right to host the game by virtue of winning their division title. Nobody expected this game to be easy, LS is a good club and their division title was not a fluke. In the first half LS largely controlled the tempo, at the break we were down by four. The boys found their legs in the third period and took a four point lead into the last quarter, JPM ended up winning it 55-48. Diante Cherry had 15 and Brian Newsome added 13 as Coach Powell used eight players and seven of them scored. The victory is the club's eighteenth (one better than last year's total) and puts us into the semifinals on Thursday against Elizabethtown, the game will be on neutral ground at Hempfield HS. We met E-town in the regular season and won by ten but that means nothing now, in the playoffs every game is a new day. A win on Thursday would put us in the league title game at Manheim Township on Saturday afternoon. The other semifinal features Manheim Township versus Lancaster Catholic, if MT wins they will play for the championship on their floor. I'm not entirely certain how fair that would be but somehow I don't think fairness is a factor. We'll see what happens on Thursday against E-town. Take care, thanks for reading.