Monday night at McCaskey for one last girls basketball game, this was their fourth home date and the fourth I was able to make. In most years they may have one or two at the most, having four (consecutive or otherwise) is very unusual. Unfortunately the run is probably over, from here on out the girls have seven home dates remaining and they are all on days I'm elsewhere (either with the boys or at the Arena). On this night Conestoga Valley visited from the eastern suburbs and it was a good one for JPM, both JV and varsity earned victories. On Wednesday evening it was a hockey night on Penn Street in downtown Reading. The Maine Mariners were in town for the first of two regular-season visits, the first time they were at the Arena since the playoffs in May. The Royals played twice on the road over the past weekend and went 2-0, on this night they kept that ball rolling but it was a battle. If you enjoy high-scoring hockey this game was right up your alley. The visitors drew first blood in the game's eighth minute, fifty-one seconds later Shane Sellar tied it at 1-1. Twenty-eight seconds after Sellar's score Charlie Gerard put the Royals ahead, Jacob Gaucher's goal late in the period made it 3-1 at the intermission. In the second Gerard struck again to put the Royals up by three but the Mariners roared back with three of their own to square it at 4-4. Eleven seconds after Maine tied it Gaucher untied it with his second of the night, entering the third period the Royals led 5-4. The Mariners scored the equalizer early in the final frame but the issue was finally decided late in the period on Alec Butcher's game-winning strike. Alec's GWG was the Alaska native's first goal scored at home and it made a winner of new goaltender Kaden Fulcher, a former Detroit Red Wing property recently added as a free agent. The 6-5 victory is the Royals' fourth in a row and the club's fifteenth in the last seventeen games. since that 1-4-1 start the record is up to 16-6-1 overall and 9-3 at home. The next home date is on Wednesday the 28th when the Wheeling Nailers visit. Saw online where the JPM boys beat Lebanon at home in my absence, that improves their mark to 4-3 overall and 2-0 within the division. Take care, thanks for reading.
