February 6-8

Monday morning at the mall for lunch, late Tuesday afternoon we convened at McCaskey for the final bus ride of the season. The last time we failed to qualify for districts was 2004, the last time we missed league playoffs was 2010 and the last time we were out of the postseason entirely was 1994 (that team went 6-15) so this was truly a lame-duck finale. Hempfield was the opponent and on this night the season ended on a downbeat note that really wasn't entirely surprising. The JV squad lost their game to finish at 13-6, a presentable record that is tarnished somewhat by four consecutive losses at the end. The varsity suffered its third straight defeat, their final mark checks in at 6-8 within the league and 7-14 overall. The club started 0-3, after ten games we were even at 5-5. Five consecutive losses followed and the team never recovered. This is only the fourth losing record we've had in Coach Powell's twenty-five years at the helm (and two of those were his first two seasons on the job), his overall record stands at 465-226 (a .673 winning percentage). The club had three players average in double figures: Ricky Cruz at 17.7 points per game, William Joseph at 11.2 and Jathan Gonzalez at 10.7 (Isiah Speller just missed the cut at 9.4). When we got back to McCaskey after the game the coaches had everybody report to the locker room to collect uniforms, all the better to put a forgettable season in the rear-view mirror. The Fall 2017 training camp should be very interesting, hopefully this season was just a hiccup but time will tell. On Wednesday Jenny and I had our usual lunch date, we'll be together again on Thursday for hockey at the Arena. That could interesting for other reasons, they are calling for snow overnight into Thursday. Take care, thanks for reading.