December 28-29

A busy Saturday started with afternoon basketball at McCaskey. A newspaper story about Friday's game referred to the proceedings as a "tournament that isn't a tournament", certainly it's been unusual but under the circumstances it was handled the fairest way possible. Attendance for the neutral-floor game on Thursday was light, I was told the turnout was somewhat better on Friday because JPM was playing. On this afternoon the crowd was much stronger for the game everyone wanted to see. Whenever athletic teams from York and Lancaster meet it's always called the War Of The Roses, at the high school level William Penn (the proper name of York's public high school) and McCaskey have history dating back to the old Central Penn League in the 1960s. Perhaps it is in poor taste to call an athletic contest a "war" but this game was a battle and-a-half, it took overtime to decide it before York prevailed 77-74. Antanee Pinkard led JPM with 20, Kobe Gantz had 17 and Donovan Garcia (from the '13 JV squad) hit double figures with 14. Antanee and Kobe were named to the tournament's all-star team. The loss drops the club's record to 5-3 overall, the boys play on Monday at Reading High in the makeup of the postponement from December 14. We started at noon and were done by 2:00, shortly after that I headed to Quarryville for Jenny and her mother. In the evening the Royals and the Kalamazoo Wings hooked up at the Arena in a rematch from Friday. The Royals' home-ice winless streak ended on this night in resounding fashion with a 5-2 victory over the K-Wings. In the first period Yannick Tifu and Ethan Cox scored forty seconds apart for a 2-0 lead, after K-Zoo got on the board Yannick struck again to make it 3-1. Final-period scores from Louie Caporusso and Marvin Degon (an '11-12 Royal who recently returned) salted away the win for Riley Gill. Things got nasty as the teams combined for 118 penalty minutes, eighty-four in the third period alone. The win improves the record to 14-10-1 overall, the next home date is in the New Year on January 8. An all-day rain was forecast for Sunday and that was exactly what happened, after the double-dip on Saturday I was more than happy to say in and relax. Take care, thanks for reading.