December 11-13

The sun finally reemerged on Tuesday morning, we hadn't seen it in several days. At 4:00 we boarded the bus for the biannual trip to Chester. We've had Chester on our non-league schedule since Coach Powell (a Chester alum) became head man at JPM in 1993, they are perennially one of the top programs in the entire country. The whole point of a non-league schedule is to play tough competition, between Harrisburg, Chester, Reading High (coming up on Saturday) and York High (possible holiday tournament matchup) it doesn't get much better than that. Chester is the two-time defending state champion, they haven't lost a game since 2010. On this night that streak continued emphatically as the Red Tornado lost 83-57. Three players hit double figures for JPM as Devonne Pinkard scored 17, Keyon Cowan had 11 and Sha-ki Staten added 10. The lessons learned from games like this can be more valuable than a blowout win over a weak opponent. Every time we go to Chester the true adventure is the trip itself. The JV game was supposed to start at 6:00, thanks to traffic we were only arriving at that time. On the way home we stopped for eats, with it all we were back in Lancaster at 12:20 Wednesday morning. The boys start league play on Friday at home against Ephrata. Not much going on Wednesday, on Thursday morning Jenny and I had our usual lunch date. The weekend will be busy as the Royals play back-to-back at home, the Fort Wayne Komets visit on Friday followed by the Orlando Solar Bears on Saturday. Take care, thanks for reading.