December 16-17

Bright sunshine on Monday helped to melt down some of the weekend snow, in the evening it was a basketball night at McCaskey. JPM started league play on Friday in Ephrata, both JV and varsity brought home a victory. On this night we hosted Conestoga Valley in another game against a Section II opponent. This was the first time CV had played at McCaskey since January of 2011, for some reason we played at CV each of the last two seasons even though the crossover matchups are supposed to alternate each year. The night started with a scintillating JV game, it took two overtimes before McCaskey prevailed 70-66 to maintain their perfect record at 3-0. The varsity game was another story altogether as the Red Tornado won handily 81-28. We were ahead by fifteen at the quarter and thirty-eight at halftime, the mercy rule kicked in early in the second half. Four players hit double figures for JPM as Kobe Gantz led with 18, Devyn Sloan had 16, Antanee Pinkard added 12 and Andre Dixon (from the JV squad in '12-13) had 10 in a reserve role. Sloan is an interesting story, he played on the freshman team in '10-11 but did not play organized ball in his sophomore or junior years. Every year we always seem to have at least one player who returns to the program and becomes a big contributor, Devyn is this year's example. The win draws the varsity record even at 2-2 (2-0 in league play) and it was a milestone victory #400 for head coach Steve Powell. "Bird" (his nickname from his playing days) was a long-time assistant coach under Pete Horn at JPM in the 70s and 80s, now in his 22nd year as the head man his mark is at 400-185 (.684 winning percentage). The boys play on Wednesday the 18th at Solanco HS, division play starts on Friday the 20th. We had some more of that white crap overnight into Tuesday, in the afternoon it flurried again. A morning errand run was all that happened (without incident, the overnight snow was all slush by then), with a busy week underway I didn't mind an evening in the warmth of home. Take care, thanks for reading.