August 27-September 2

The last week of August felt more like the middle of July, daytime highs for the most part were in the 90s. Summer dek hockey continued on Tuesday evening with what would have been the final games, Gold met Orange and Blue played Green. Thursday night was the official end of the season with the makeup games from the 21st, Blue vs Orange and Green vs Gold. Each team played nine games, a total of forty-eight players participated in the eighteen-game schedule. The month ended on Friday with week #2 of high school football season, I was planning to go to McCaskey's game over in York but the weather didn't cooperate. There were massive thunderstorms all over the area, in the afternoon I was monitoring the Internet and postponements were being announced all around due to the rain. There were reports of flooded roads including a ten-mile stretch of route 30 in York County but there was no immediate word on the status of McCaskey's game. Shortly after 4:00 I got a telephone call from old acquaintance Steve Polonus, a former assistant basketball coach and athletic director at McCaskey. These days Steve is the AD at Hempfield, their game was postponed to Saturday morning and he asked if I might be available and willing to work it since their regular PA guy couldn't do it. I've known Steve since 1988, he was in a bind and there really wasn't any reason I couldn't so under the circumstances I wasn't going to turn him down. The game kicked off at 10:00 which in itself was a bad flashback for me, before McCaskey had lights at the stadium our home games were always on Saturdays at 10:30. When I arrived and touched base with Steve he was with Danny Walck, Hempfield's head basketball coach and another guy I have history with (Danny was the AD at Lancaster Catholic who brought me aboard to work their football games back in 1996). During the course of the day I got a few "Frenchy, what are you doing here?" reactions from those who didn't know I was just there helping a friend out (although nobody seemed to be particularly upset about it either). The game was over by 12:15, I made my way from Landisville to Jenny's place for a later-than-usual lunch (she was aware I was working football and might run late). Saw on the Internet where McCaskey lost in York, that game was played on Saturday at 11:00. The boys stand at 0-2 with a pair of road non-league losses, JPM plays its first home game on September 7. Take care, thanks for reading.