July 14-16

Tuesday night at the rink as we started week #13 of street hockey, the Kings and Killbots resumed the West finals tied at a game apiece. The Kings won 3-1 to take a two-to-one series lead, they clinched the championship on Wednesday with a 2-1 victory that will probably be talked about for a long time. It was a 1-1 game with just over a minute left in regulation time when a altercation started in front of the Killbots net, it escalated to the point where everybody on the rink was involved (except the Kings goalie, he was smart enough to stay out of it). By the time we had it sorted out three players were ejected (two for fighting) and the Kings were awarded a five-on-three power play. As play resumed a Kings player took a penalty to reduce the advantage to four-on-three, with fifty-five seconds left the Kings scored to break the tie. The remaining time was successfully killed off as a team that finished sixth out of eight during the regular season claimed the playoff championship. Along the way they eliminated the #3, #2 and #1 seeds so nobody can say it was a fluke, it was simply a matter of peaking at the right time. The spring season at Reservoir Park is finally in the books, a mere eighty-five days after it began. On Thursday I was back at the ballpark, the Barnstormers hosted Long Island in the finale of their series. After winning the (regularly-scheduled) opener on Monday the Stormers struggled through back-to-back shutout losses on Tuesday and Wednesday. On this night they salvaged a series split with a no-doubt-about-it 8-1 win. Lance Zawadzki's second-inning home run made it 1-0, in the third former New York Yankee property Andeson Feliz scored the second run on the front end of a double-steal. Keith Castillo's RBI single in the fourth and a run-scoring double by Brian Cavazos-Galvez extended the lead, in the sixth a sac fly from Feliz and a two-run shot by ex-Phillies prospect Zach Collier effectively put the game away (one final run scored on a wild pitch in the eighth). New pitcher Ray Hanson (from the LA Angels organization) made his Atlantic League debut and pitched five innings for the win. The Stormers stay at home for the weekend, the York Revs come to town for three games. Take care, thanks for reading.