Friday night was a football night at McCaskey, the start of my thirty-fourth season on the mic as the Red Tornado hosted York (not the Revs, the high school). JPM opened its season the week before with a road victory over Reading High which ended a horrendous losing streak dating back almost three years, the irony is that the last win before this was also against RHS. The program has a new head coach, former assistant Ben Thompson has taken over for the departed Sam London who has returned to college coaching. Whatever momentum the club may have had from their opening win was completely absent on this night, the game result was unfortunately and very depressingly familiar. York scored sixteen points in the first quarter and tripled that total before halftime, the entire second half was played under the mercy rule. The final was 54-7, the lone score for JPM came in the fourth quarter when Kasir Taylor hit paydirt on a quarterback keeper and Dale Sallie kicked the extra point. Starting the year by erasing that zero in the win column was a good way to begin but the fact is the program still has a long way to go. On the bright side we had Real Live People in attendance for the first time since 2019, I'd say the home side was about 70-75% capacity and the visiting crowd was respectable as well. There were a few suggestion announcements made in regard to fan safety but for the most part it was Business As Usual and it's certainly about time. The boys play at home on the 10th against Lebanon. On Saturday morning I was at it early, the destination was northeastern Berks County for the season-opener college game in Kutztown. The SID there is a Berks County guy who knows me largely by reputation, I'm on his "as needed" list and this was one of those occasions. The host Golden Bears defeated Assumption University (from Worcester, Massachusetts) 19-0 before an enthusiastic crowd that also appeared to be very unrestricted (the fact that the program didn't play at all the previous year probably added to the enthusiasm). This may have been one of the most rapidly-played college football games ever, it kicked off at 12-noon and was over right around 2:30. As it stands right now I'll be there again on October 30 but there are two other games I could do if needed, we'll see what happens. On Sunday I had lunch with Jenny and her mother since we missed out on Saturday because I was out of town (anybody who tries to take that away from us will have the damnedest fight they've ever seen). Take care, thanks for reading.
