February 15

Felt better on Friday morning after an earlier-than-usual bedtime on Thursday night. In the afternoon we boarded the bus at McCaskey for the drive to Manheim Township HS and the league championship game. After surviving a four-team logjam and finishing second in our division Cedar Crest battled through two tough playoff wins and earned the right to play us for the league title. It had the makings of a wonderful Cinderella story and on this night in Neffsville it looked for a while like a real possibility. For most of the first half CC controlled the tempo, at halftime we were down 23-21. Maybe our guys thought it would be easy money after beating them twice during the regular season, for whatever reason we were clearly not at our best. Coach Powell lit a fire under the team in the locker room at halftime, after the break we outscored them 41-18 and took it going away 62-41. Diante Cherry led with 17 (12 in the second half), Keyon Cowan had 12 (ten after the break), Sha-ki Staten added 10, Aaron Swinton and Devonne Pinkard had eight apiece. In forty-one years of league play the program has been to the playoffs 27 times, this year on the strength of our 18th division title. The league championship is our 13th in twenty-two title game appearances and the eighth in thirteen tries during Coach Powell's tenure. The overall record improves to 23-2 but that means little at this point because the next item on the agenda is a first-round district game in the land of "win and go on or lose and go home", that game is at home on Wednesday the 20th. Take care, thanks for reading.