December 7-8

Saturday morning lunch with Jenny in Quarryville, in the afternoon we boarded the bus at McCaskey. When the late Steve "Bird" Powell became head coach in 1993 we began an annual tradition of playing his alma mater as part of our non-league schedule, he was a 1968 graduate of Chester High School and is enshrined in the CHS Athletic Hall-Of-Fame. Chester is traditionally one of the top programs in the state, over the years we have beaten them only a handful of times but the experience gained from playing a tough non-league opponent is always beneficial. In a scheduling quirk we did not play Chester in '18-19, on this night we traveled into the shadow of Philadelphia for the first time since December of 2016. This game was part of a six-game showcase event in Chester, the first game started at 1:00 and we were the main-event at 8:30. Many people probably viewed us as the sacrificial lamb since we were opposing the host school but the game was very competitive. JPM started strong and led by nine at the quarter, at the half the lead was ten. In the third quarter Chester made their move and cut the deficit to four, in the final period they outscored us by twelve and won the game 54-46. The officiating unsurprisingly played a role, we were called for thirty fouls and had three men disqualified while Chester was whistled for nineteen and never had anyone in trouble. On the floor we outscored them 38-34, at the line they outscored us 20-8 and that made the difference. All things considered it's not entirely disappointing, we have only three returnees on the roster but the guys acquitted themselves well. In past years we've gone into that gym and lost by thirty, many probably expected a similar result this time around but our kids showed a lot of heart and they never gave up. Freddy used ten players and six got into the scoring column: newcomer Elijah Terry led with 18, returnees Isaiah Thomas and Makai Ortiz-Gray were next with 11 and eight respectively. Samir Gordon (from the '18-19 JV squad) added six, newcomers Irving Gonzalez (two points) and Jayon Burnside (one-for-two at the line) rounded out the scoring. With it all we weren't back home until almost 12:45 on Sunday morning, I spent all of that day indoors with pro football and college hockey on TV. The boys play at Reading HS on Wednesday the 11th with the JV squad in action as well. Take care, thanks for reading.