January 8-10

Friday night high school basketball at JPM, the Red Tornado finally hit the floor for real in the league opener with visiting Hempfield. As it was during football season there are no fans permitted (at least for right now) but the games are being livestreamed for the home audience. The chairs at the player benches were spaced out appropriately, the teams not playing were sitting in the bleachers directly behind their team's bench and McCaskey's cheerleaders were seated in the bleachers on the opposite side. At the scorer's table I'm at the end closest to our bench, the clock operator sits in the middle and the stat-board keeper sits at the opposite end. There is an auxiliary table behind and to my left for the visiting scorer since apparently by PIAA rule both scorers can't be at the main table for distancing purposes. Under the circumstances it all worked well. I had no trouble communicating with anyone and there were no issues with the books or the clock all night. In the games themselves it was a rough night all around for the Good Guys, the JV squad fell 42-27 and the varsity lost 47-36. Reggie Watson is back for his second year as the JV bench boss, he has three returnees among the thirteen players on his roster. The varsity roster features seven seniors, four juniors, one sophomore and one freshman. The two games were eerily similar, JPM started slowly and battled back but could not get over the hump. Between the three-week shutdown thanks to the government and no preseason scrimmages of any kind there is a lot of rust to be removed but the talent is there. Freddy got nine players into the game and seven of them scored: Hasan Williams (the '19-20 JV club's leading scorer) led with ten, Jonathan Byrd (the lone returnee with significant varsity time) had eight, Sam Hershey and freshman Jared Kumah had six each. Grady Bachman had three points, newcomer Dante Ashford scored two points and Jayon Burnside was one-for-two at the line. The results were undesirable but getting that first game under the belt means a lot, the boys are back on the floor on the 11th at Manheim Township. Take carem thanks for reading.