December 11-12

Wednesday night hoops at J.P. McCaskey as the new-look Red Tornado hosted Chester (Coach Powell's alma mater). Preseason rankings have Chester as the #2 team in the state, they have been a regular non-league opponent since Coach Powell took the reins at JPM in 1993. Every time we play them the game never starts on time because the visiting team invariably arrives late, last season in Chester we got there just as the JV game was scheduled to start. On this night at JPM the JV game was delayed forty minutes because it was their turn to be late (fair is fair, I guess). I've always believed that a good JV game stokes the crowd for the varsity main event and that's exactly what we got. The Red Tornado junior varsity made its season debut a successful one with a tough 58-57 win. In the varsity contest JPM led just once at 5-4 but battled to the end as Chester escaped with an 86-80 verdict. Antanee Pinkard (younger brother of Devonne) led the Red Tornado with 20 points, Randolph Speller and La'Detrius Sibley had 14 each and Kobe Gantz had 11. Pinkard, Sibley and Gantz were members of the JV squad last season, Speller played varsity at Lancaster Catholic and transferred to JPM this year. The loss drops the club's mark to 0-2 but all things considered there is a lot to be encouraged about, a pair of six-point losses to top-level competition is no reason to push the panic button. Every year we play a tough non-league schedule and there is a definite purpose to it. With the late start the varsity game wound down shortly before 10:00, four hours after the evening's scheduled starting time. On Thursday we did our usual lunch visit in Quarryville, in the afternoon I was over at practice to hand over the books for the weekend. The boys play in Ephrata on Friday and at Reading High on Saturday, I will miss both of them because the Royals are at home both nights. Take care, thanks for reading.