December 16-17

It was overcast on Monday morning with rain in the forecast, I had my car at the service center for some diagnostic work. As it turned out everything was covered under warranty, I had close to two hundred dollars worth of work done and it didn't cost me a cent (no complaints from this corner at all). In late afternoon I was at McCaskey for the first home game of basketball season, the boys hosted Conestoga Valley in an divisional crossover game. We play our four division mates twice each and each club from "Section Two" once each, it's the second year for this particular format (rumor has the league realigning in 2020-21 but that's another story). Both JV and varsity began league play with wins in Lebanon the previous Friday, on this night at JPM the JV squad improved to 2-1 with a thirty-nine point victory. The varsity game was similarly almost never in doubt as the Red Tornado rolled to an 82-58 win. It should be noted that CV was missing three of their better players and they were 1-3 coming in so quite frankly it was a game we should have won and the guys took care of business. We were up 44-11 at halftime, the second half was just about all "garbage-time" although you have to give CV credit in that the game never entered into the mercy rule (which kicks in when the margin reaches forty points). Nine players got into the scoring column for JPM: Isaiah Thomas led with 17, Makai Ortiz-Gray had 15, Irving Gonzalez added 13 and Samir Gordon scored 11. Elijah Terry and Carter Gingerich had seven each, Kevin Polite (from the 18-19 JV club) added six and newcomers Misael Gonzalez and Jonathan Byrd had three apiece. Misael played JV in '17-18 and is back from a year's absence, Byrd is a freshman and the brother of former JPM player Bryant Byrd (class of 2008). The team stands at 2-0 league-wise and 2-2 overall, they are back on the floor at Warwick (always a fun place to visit) on Wednesday the 19th. Had lunch with Jenny on a miserably rainy Tuesday, spent the rest of the day at home and was glad to be there. Take care, thanks for reading.