March 6-8

Any weekend featuring three home games in three days is rough enough to begin with, when it's actually a FOUR-in-three it's particularly challenging. We were back at the Arena bright and early on Sunday, the day started with the eleventh edition of the Battle Of The Badges. Gordon Kaye was one of the creators of this game back in 2006 and it is always a well-received event on the calendar. The Reading Police won over the Reading Fire Department on this day by a count of 6-2 but the RFD still leads the all-time series 6-4 with one tie. In the main event the Royals got off the schneid with a 3-2 win over the Norfolk Admirals. The Ads took a 1-0 lead early in the second period, in the late going Jesper Pettersson (Stockholm, Sweden native on assignment from the AHL Phantoms) scored on a breakaway to tie the game. In the final period the Royals assumed the lead on goals by Kevin Young and Joey Sides, Norfolk cut the advantage to one midway through but the Royals held on for an important victory. Martin Ouellette returned from the Phantoms and picked up the win as the club's mark improves to 28-23-8, 13-13-4 at home. In past years the Royals home schedules were notoriously backloaded but this season is an exception. Between February 20 and March 22 (a span of thirty-two days) the club had only these three home dates, the next five games are on the road before we host Kalamazoo on the 23rd. On Sunday it was announced that McCaskey's second-round state playoff on Wednesday the 9th is at Coatesville HS. The opponent is Simon Gratz (a well-known program from Philadelphia), they defeated Lower Merion in their first-rounder. In terms of travel it's about even, Coatesville is a 25-mile trip east for us and maybe a little further for them but at least it's somewhat equitable (unlike the first round where we may as well have played in our opponent's gym). We played Gratz in the state playoffs back in 2006 (when current pro player Lamar Patterson was a freshman at JPM) but in high school sports ten years is three lifetimes ago, what happened then means nothing now. On Monday the weather turned remarkably warm, daytime highs reached into the 70s (way too high for this time of year). Take care, thanks for reading.