February 11-12

Thursday night at Manheim Township HS for the league title game, for the first time since 2013 the McCaskey Red Tornado are the Lancaster-Lebanon League champions. Although we had met and defeated Cedar Crest twice already by a total of fifty points nobody was expecting this night to be easy and it wasn't, CC came to play and had both barrels loaded. The first three quarters of this game played out eerily similar to the game against CV (except that it was much lower scoring), we held a two-point lead entering the final period. JPM went on an 8-3 run to open the quarter and extend the lead, CC could come no closer as the Red Tornado claimed the the title 54-47. Coach Powell only used six players and five of them scored: Ricky Cruz and Randolph Speller had 16 each, Kobe Gantz 9, Greg Nunez 8 and Izaiah Baratta 5. The LL has been around been 1972, this is JPM's fourteenth league title and the ninth under Coach Powell. The program has been to the finals twenty-four times in the league's forty-four seasons, fifteen of those in Coach Powell's twenty-four years at the helm at McCaskey. For the players it was a long-awaited championship, our last title came when the current seniors were freshmen. None of them were on the varsity roster in 2013 although Kobe played that season on the JV squad. This championship is especially rewarding because it came at the expense of an old antagonist. The '13 championship was over Cedar Crest, in the following two seasons JPM went 1-6 against CC including two losses in division-tiebreakers and a defeat in the league title game in 2015. On this night we reclaimed the championship and denied our opponent a third straight title. The focus now is on the upcoming district tournament, the opening round is on Wednesday the 17th. As the #5 seed we host #12 seed Conestoga Valley (did someone say DEJA VU) in a win-or-go-home game, a victory would send JPM to the second round on the 20th. I am absent that night since the Royals play at home but I'm good for the rest of the tournament providing the club advances (at this point of the season the only thing for sure is that NOTHING is for sure). It was very cold and windy on Friday, they are expecting frigid conditions for the weekend. Take care, thanks for reading.