September 28-30

Friday evening: the football team at McCaskey was scheduled to play at home but the midweek rains reeked havoc on the playing field at the stadium, in mid-afternoon the game was postponed and rescheduled for Saturday night. JPM has only four home games in 2018 thanks to a scheduling snafu, apparently the first game of the season was supposed to be at home but it was played on the road. I'm told we'll get that game at home in '19 and have six at home overall to make up for it. Had my usual weekend visit with Jenny on Saturday morning, in the evening I was at the game. Neither school's band was there since Saturday is a big night for band competitions, we played the pregame anthem from a cell phone. JPM head coach Eric Spencer told me the field was a swamp on Friday afternoon, the ground was so soggy it was almost impossible to stand up on it. This was a matchup of teams who have struggled thus far, the Red Tornado entered at 1-4 and visiting Penn Manor was 0-5. Manor had been outscored 200-20 through their first five games but on this night you would have never known it, they raced out to a 21-0 lead midway through the second quarter. JPM got on the board on a touchdown pass from Isaiah Thomas to Christian Vasquez but another PM score made it 28-7 at the half. The only score after the intermission belonged to McCaskey, Thomas found Noah Santiago for a touchdown but it meant little as JPM lost 28-14. The program has not been strong in recent years but quite frankly this is a loss that may very well be rock-bottom, at this point there cannot be any other way to go except up. The next home game is on October 12 when Hempfield visits for the Homecoming game. Take care, thanks for reading.