February 1-2

The new month started with the usual Monday lunch visit at the mall, the parking lots were in much better shape than the previous week. The leftover snowdrifts are melting nicely and the trend should continue since temperatures are expected to rise later in the week. On Tuesday evening the regular season ended at McCaskey as the Red Tornado hosted arch-rival Hempfield, the JV squad won 49-39 to finish their schedule at 14-3. Before the varsity game we honored Tymir Mitchell, Deshawn Crosby, John Burnside, Skyler Davis, Randolph Speller and Kobe Gantz as part of Senior Night activities. The game itself was the proverbial barnburner as JPM avenged the loss to Hempfield the first time around with a 56-53 win. The Red Tornado trailed by one in the closing seconds when Greg Nunez scored on a putback to give JPM the lead, on the subsequent inbound Speller stole the ball and was fouled. Ran hit both free throws to push the lead to three, a Hempfield desperation shot fell short as time expired. Kobe Gantz led JPM with 13, Ricky Cruz and Izaiah Baratta had 10 apiece, Ran finished with nine and Greg had seven. The club finishes the league season at 14-2 and 16-5 overall, the next order of business is the league playoffs. The first round is on Saturday the 6th, as a division champion we host the runnerup from Section III (either ELCO or Cocalico). The semifinals are on Tuesday the 9th, the championship game (should we be so fortunate) is on Thursday the 11th. In the long run we may remember this night more for the unusual conditions surrounding it than the actual game results. When the custodial crew prepared the gym for the evening they could not get the scoreboard at the south end to work, they finally had it up and running just before the JV game started. Midway through the first quarter of the varsity game it blew out completely, we had only the board at the north end the rest of the night. The malfunction rendered the scoreboard buzzer useless as well, I spent the rest of the game blowing a whistle over the PA to signal substitutions and the end of each quarter. Not exactly the greatest way to get through an evening but it worked, after the game the officiating crew commented on how well things went under the circumstances. One fan said to me that I must have strong lungs, he didn't realize that the whistles were into an open microphone. A unique experience to be sure. Take care, thanks for reading.