November 16-19

Monday marked the first day of high school winter sports practice, after supper I went over to McCaskey. The boys basketball team was on the floor from 5:30 to 7:30 since it was the girls team's week for early practices. Coach Powell is still recovering from his throat surgery in September of 2014, the ability to speak is coming along but it's obviously a slow process. When I greeted him and we shook hands he responded with a smile and a nod of the head. There were close to sixty players in the gym, since the varsity and JV squads combined will probably carry less than thirty it's safe to say that half of them won't be around by the end of the week. The season starts on December 5, we play in a showcase event at Holy Family College (which is apparently somewhere around Philadelphia but I have no idea exactly where). On Tuesday night we started the street hockey finals at Reservoir Park, the second games were played on Wednesday. One game on each night went into overtime, on Wednesday the game that didn't may as well have for the amount of time it took to play. Being a referee is a rough job under the best of circumstances, when the teams grouse incessantly over every call that goes against them it becomes virtually impossible. One penalized player commented to me that the game was a mockery, I told him that I agreed 100% and the reason it was a mockery was because some people just don't know how to play the game and shut the BLEEP up (if he was expecting sympathy from me it was not forthcoming). When the smoke cleared both series were tied 1-1, we had planned to play the third games on Thursday but it didn't happen. An expected all-day rain moved in overnight, the games were effectively postponed by noontime but we waited until late afternoon to make it official. The series continue on Monday the 23rd and Tuesday the 24th, if we're lucky they can both be over before Thanksgiving weekend. Take care, thanks for reading.