February 15-18

Little happening on Monday or Tuesday save for the morning errand runs. On Monday evening we had a "wintry mix" as they call it, there were reports of freezing roads and bad driving all around. The precipitation turned into a straight rain overnight into Tuesday, with temperatures in the 50s and afternoon sunlight things melted down and dried out quickly. On Wednesday Jenny and her mother were in Willow Street for morning medical appointments, after lunch we came back to town and headed to Reading in late afternoon. The Royals hosted Manchester in the first of a two-game set at the Arena and suffered what can only be called a disheartening 4-3 overtime defeat. Pavel Padakin and Robbie Czarnik gave the club a 2-0 first-period lead, the Monarchs cut the lead in half in the second but Brandon Alderson replied quickly to restore the two-goal lead. In the third period Manchester scored early to make it 3-2, with the goalie on the bench for the extra attacker they tied it 3-3 with twenty-two seconds left in regulation time. In the 3-on-3 overtime period the Mons took advantage of a break to score the winning goal, Martin Ouellette took the loss but deserved a better fate. The club's mark drops to 24-19-8 including a 1-8 record in games that have gone beyond regulation. The teams meet again on Friday the 19th at the Arena, on Saturday they square off in Manchester. Got word later in the evening that McCaskey won its district opener over CV 81-77 in (of all things) overtime. An officiating crew from the Mid-Penn Conference worked the game and by all accounts it was atrocious, from personal experience I can't say I'm surprised. Refereeing is a tough job and most of the better officials understand their role but there are some who never got that memo, I've been present on a number of occasions when the game was more about blowing whistles than actually playing. The win for JPM is the club's twentieth and ensures at least four more games, the next of those on Saturday the 20th against Spring Grove (from southwestern York County) at Dallastown HS (in southeastern York County). It's the #5 seed (us) versus #4 (them) but the territorial advantage is not overly unfair, Dallastown is about thirty miles from Lancaster and maybe fifteen or so from Spring Grove. In 2015 we played in this same game as the #4 seed, we traveled thirty miles to the game site while our opponent traveled only two (so much for the incentive of earning a higher seed). Spring Grove enters at 23-2 so it should definitely be a challenge but at this point in the season there are no more easy touches. Take care, thanks for reading.