April 16-19

Let's get right to the point: hockey season in Reading is over, for the first time since 2011 the Royals were defeated in a best-of-seven playoff series in a four-game sweep. In Game #3 at the Arena on Monday the Royals took three separate one-goal leads thanks to Matt Wilkins, Chris McCarthy and Nolan Zajac, on each occasion Manchester replied in kind. The game (naturally) went into overtime, in the eighteenth minute of extra play the Monarchs netted the winner to take the 4-3 decision and a 3-0 series lead. The End came on Wednesday in game #4, the Royals were held scoreless for the first time at home since January 12 as Manchester won 3-0 to finish the sweep. It was a 1-0 game into the final minute when the Monarchs scored two empty-net goals to make the final score more misleading than it really was. This was probably one of the most competitive four-game sweeps you might ever see, discounting the empty-net scores the Royals lost each game by one goal with three of the losses in overtime. John Muse played the entire series in net for the Royals and could not possibly have been any better, in the minutes-played equivalent of five-and-a-half games he surrendered just eleven goals. The Royals were beaten by a team that played brick-wall defense and got the breaks when it counted, had one bounce here or there at any point gone the Royals way the series could very well have had a different result. It's always sad when a season ends (especially as early as this one did) but October will be here before we know it. On Thursday we were at McCaskey for baseball, the Red Tornado hosted Lampeter-Strasburg in a divisional-crossover game. This game was originally scheduled for Monday the 16th but was rained out, that's twice a game I would have missed for hockey was PPD and reset for a date I was available. At 4:15 game time it was in the mid-40s with the winds howling from the northwest at better than twenty miles per hour, being in the PA booth affords me some comfort for being inside out of the wind but the fact that it is not insulated means it's still COLD. In the first inning Dylan Esh and Mason Lee reached on base hits. Alex Dominguez's RBI single scored Esh and Joe Cunningham followed with a sacrifice fly RBI plating Lee to give JPM a 2-0 lead. L-S went up 3-2 in the third, in the home fourth Noah Bergey doubled and came home on Esh's RBI hit to tie it 3-3. In the fifth Dominguez doubled and scored on Seth Winters' RBI single to put JPM up for good, the final score 4-3. Winters started on the mound and worked into the seventh inning picking up the win with last-out relief from Dylan Esh. The boys stay home to host Ephrata on Friday at 7:00 (bring the extra blankets and the hot chocolate). Take care, thanks for reading.