January 9-10

Wednesday morning lunch with Jenny, in the late afternoon we were back on the road north to Berks County. Encountered some snow flurries on 222 between Brownstown and Ephrata but nothing of any consequence. The Adirondack Thunder was in town for the third of their five regular-season visits and for most of the game the script was eerily similar to the victory over Norfolk the previous Friday. The game was scoreless early in the second period until Adam Schmidt broke the ice on a power play to put the Royals ahead, Frank DiChiara's PP strike six minutes later made it 2-0. Josh MacDonald lit the lamp late in the period to give the Royals a three-goal advantage which would last into the final moments, a late ADK tally denied Callum Booth his bid for a shutout but it wasn't enough to deny him the game's #1 star and the Royals a 3-1 victory. The club reaches the midpoint of its home schedule at 8-6-4 and overall the mark is 17-9-8, the next home game is Wednesday the 16th against Manchester. On Thursday night the McCaskey girls had a home game, one of those rare instances where I get to see them play (this was actually the second time it has happened this season, usually I'm lucky if it occurs once). The program has struggled mightily thus far with a very young varsity roster, head coach Brian McCloud has only two seniors and it's obviously about growing pains and gaining experience (the boys endured similar circumstances in '17-18 and are all the better for it now). On this night Steelton-Highspire visited from the suburbs of Harrisburg and the results for JPM were all too familiar with both JV and varsity coming out on the short end. Take care, thanks for reading.