November 4-6

Friday afternoon in the school library at McCaskey for the annual Athletic Hall-Of-Fame inductions, I attended largely because a classmate of mine from 1974 was one of the honorees. Denise Gobrecht was a three-sport athlete, she participated in field hockey, basketball and track-and-field. We were not in a lot of school classes together but we knew each other because of our involvement in athletics. She attended college at Lock Haven and later coached in the city school district. When I saw her at the ceremony I congratulated her, we embraced and I told her "classmates in '74, fellow Hall-Of-Famers now" (I was honored with induction into the Hall in 2014 but I generally don't make a big deal of it). Four others were inducted in addition to Denise, two of them posthumously. Jack Cassebaum was head football coach at McCaskey from 1969 to 1971, he passed on in 2015. LeRoy Duke wrestled at JPM in the 1940s and coached the sport for many years, he died in 2011. Also honored were Joe Ganse (class of 1971) who played football under "Coach Cass" and Edward "Champ" Hall (class of 1983), a former football and track star who has made his mark as a businessman in the Lancaster area. The HOF activities were still going when I had to take my leave to get prepared for the game at the stadium. The Red Tornado hosted Warwick in the season's final game and came out on the wrong end of a 17-0 decision. The club finishes 4-6 under first-year head coach Eric Spenser but the record at home was a disappointing 1-4. It takes any new coach time to put in a new system and the club improved as the season progressed, hopefully better times are ahead. Saw on the Internet where Lancaster Catholic finished their year at 7-3, in 2017 it will be a new start at LCHS with the opening of the rebuilt Rossmere Stadium. On Saturday we did our usual lunch date in Quarryville, Sunday marked the end of the street hockey league's regular season. Four games rained out on October 27 were on the docket, since it was a Sunday we started at 5:00 instead of the usual 6:15 weeknight start. As the night began three of the games had significance but the result of the first game resolved everything and rendered the rest of the night meaningless. For the record the Owls beat the Riot, the Misfits defeated the Pub Dawgs, the Steamers won over the Kings and the Blues downed the Hammerheads. Playoffs start on Monday the 7th with the East Division finals (Steamers vs UniLords) and the West semifinals (Owls-Misfits and Blues-Riot). Take care, thanks for reading.