January 1-3

The nineteenth year of the current century began on a Tuesday (that's right: the 21st Century began on the first day of 2001, not 2000), there was little happening outside of college football on TV from noon until past midnight. On Wednesday Jenny and I had our first lunch date of 2019, in the late afternoon we convened at McCaskey for a bus trip to a non-league game in the southernmost reaches of Chester County. The borough of Oxford is about thirty miles southeast of Lancaster and about six miles north of the state border with Maryland, I've been there before but never to the high school itself. It was about an hour's ride, we went south through Quarryville and another fifteen miles beyond that. The gym itself was unusual in that the front row of the stands on either side were about twenty-five feet away from the sidelines, the spaciousness plus the relatively small attendance made it feel like we were playing in the Grand Canyon. JPM hosted its holiday tournament over the previous weekend and things did not go exactly as planned. A similar situation occurred in our tournament in 2016: there were only three teams involved and one of them could only play one game because their schedule was already booked, as a result there was just one game each night. JPM played both nights and lost to Lower Dauphin on Friday and York on Saturday (two teams with one loss between them). On this night in Oxford the JPM JV got the night started properly with a 43-31 victory, the varsity game was a struggle early on. We trailed by eight at halftime but in the third quarter the club outscored Oxford 19-6 and gutted out a 56-47 win. Coach Ramos used seven players and six got into the scoring column: Jahsaan Greaves led with 16, Brian Mckenzie had 13 and Ajani Simmons had 11. Isaiah Thomas added nine, Bryam Menendez had five and Makai Ortiz had a quiet night with two points. The win puts the club back above .500 at 5-4 overall, league play continues with a divisional game (in my absence) on the road on Friday the 4th. Take care, thanks for reading.