For a number of years the athletic director at Hempfield HS was a gentleman named Steve Polonus, a former assistant basketball coach and AD at McCaskey. On occasion Steve would ask me to work a game at Hempfield when needed and I would never turn him down if I was available. Steve retired in 2022 and was succeeded by Ryan Landis, a Warwick alum who played and coached basketball there and was their most recent AD. When Hempfield visited JPM on the 15th Ryan asked me if I'd be able to work their game on the 22nd, since McCaskey was on the road I took him up on it. In a strange oddity JPM hosted Hempfield on the 15th and is scheduled to host Manheim Township on the 29th, on this night in Landisville I saw the two against each other. This was my fourth time on the mic at Hempfield since 2018 and there were a few "Frenchy, what are you doing here?" reactions but at the same time nobody seemed to mind that I was. The game itself was never much in doubt, Township is one of the league's stronger clubs and they won handily 48-7. There was good news on Friday night from Long Island, the Barnstormers won 4-2 and took the ALPB North Division championship in a three-game sweep. The ballclub meets either Gastonia or High Point for the league title, the first two games are at home on the 26th and 27th. It was just as well the series ended on Friday, the rest of the weekend would have been very doubtful. A tropical storm was pushing its way up the coast and arrived on Saturday in the form of a steady rain. It was still coming down on Sunday morning, I was awake around 8:00, took one look out the window and the week's hockey games in Rothsville were immediately postponed. In the fall of '22 three of the first four weeks were rained out, so far this time around we've lost two of the first three and we do NOT need the pattern to repeat. Take care, thanks for reading
