Friday night at McCaskey for the first of a back-to-back at home. Penn Manor visited for the opener of the league's regular season and the first of the ten games counting towards the division standings. On this night the issue was resolved early on and emphatically, the Red Tornado ran out to an 18-0 lead midway through the first quarter. By halftime the lead was up to thirty-two, the thirty-point mercy rule kicked in at the start of the second half. The final was 72-50, three players hit double figures for JPM: De'Shaun McFadden led with eighteen, Eric Centeno had sixteen and Elias Garcia scored fifteen. Jonathan Byrd netted eight points, Wednesday hero Markelle Caine had five, Nemias Tirado and Aiden Burgess contributed four each and Stanley Moise scored his first two varsity points. Saturday was a quick turnaround for the team and myself, in the morning I was with Jenny for lunch but by 2:30 I was back at JPM. On this day Lancaster Catholic visited for a non-league game that has been years in the making. It's something Freddy has wanted to do since he came to McCaskey from LCHS in 2018 and it finally came together, in many ways this day was like an old-fashioned reunion (even for me to a certain degree thanks to my past association with LCHS). The JV squad entered and exited the weekend still looking for its first win, on the good side the varsity evened its overall mark at 3-3 with a tough 58-47 win. Not everybody on the LCHS roster is a "city kid" but there is still a good degree of familiarity, the game was well worth the price of admission. De'Shaun McFadden scored eighteen points (for the second consecutive game) to lead JPM, Jonathan Byrd and Nemias Tirado had eleven each, Eric Centeno scored eight points, Elias Garcia had six and Markelle Caine had four. There was a time when LC/JPM was a big deal in basketball but over the years it's fallen off somewhat thanks to the difference in the schools' enrollment sizes, maybe this day was the start of a new trend. In '21-22 JPM started 0-3 and didn't reach .500 until the last game of the season, this win pulls the club even through six games. I'll be away from the next two thanks to hockey with the Royals, my next time with JPM is on the 29th for the second night of our holiday tournament. Take care, thanks for reading.
