February 20-22

Monday lunch at the mall as usual, in the evening I was at McCaskey. The girls' basketball team hosted Hempfield in a first-round district playoff, one of those sudden-death "win or it's over" games. JPM earned the right to host it by being the higher seed but there were no guarantees because Hempfield had won in our gym on the last night of the league season. If there were any lingering effects from the loss in the league title game they were quickly eliminated as the Red Tornado took command early and never let up on the way to a decisive 48-25 victory. The win puts the girls in tough against Cedar Crest (AGAIN) in the second round, that game is in Cornwall on Thursday the 23rd. The morning errand run was all that happened on Tuesday, the next day was our regular lunch visit with Jenny in Quarryville. In the evening we were at the Arena in downtown Reading, the Royals hosted the Greenville Swamp Rabbits for the first of their two appearances. The club's three-game winning streak ended on this night in frustrating fashion. The Rabbits jumped out a 3-0 lead after one period, in the second the Royals climbed back into it thanks to a pair of goals from Ian Watters. Early in the third Greenville went back up by two, Jesper Pettersson's score drew the Royals to within 4-3. In the closing minutes a Greenville player was fouled from behind with the Royals net empty, the resulting "awarded goal" made the final score 5-3. Mark Dekanich played the first period and was relieved by Martin Ouellette who suffered the loss. The club's drops to 31-18-3, 16-10-0 at home. The boys play in Glens Falls on Friday and have a rare Saturday off, the next home game is on Sunday the 26th. Take care, thanks for reading.