February 27-29

Monday evening at the Lancaster Ice Rink, Devyn Tankesley's high school team from Hempfield played a league playoff game. The opponent was Wilson HS (our old friends from suburban Reading). This was a losers bracket game, Hempfield was eliminated with a 5-3 loss. On Tuesday morning my mother had an eye examination at the health campus. For the obvious reasons she asked me to drive, I had her there by 10:30 and killed time until she was finished shortly before 1:00. Later in the afternoon we convened at McCaskey for the bus ride to Enola. It's roughly a 45 mile trip from Lancaster, the saving grace is that it's almost all highway so we were there in about an hour. This was the first time I was ever in this gym but for the team it was a second consecutive appearance since they had played there on Saturday. Unfortunately the familiar surroundings were of no help as the club lost to Central Dauphin 69-56. CD has a kid who stands six-foot-nine and we had no answer for him, he scored almost half of his team's points. The loss puts the team into the seventh-place game on Thursday and from there the story is simple: win and qualify for the state tournament or lose and go home. Later in the evening we got word that Elizabethtown will be our opponent, after losing to us twice this year (including an OT loss in the league playoffs) you know they would love nothing more than to send us home for the season. It was announced that the game will be at Garden Spot HS in New Holland, about 14 miles east of Lancaster so at least it's not a long trip. Wednesday was Leap Year Day, that extra day on the calendar that last appeared in 2008. It was dark and rainy all day, after the morning errand run I was in for the day and glad to be there. Take care, thanks for reading.