November 20-28

Another quiet week in the books with the Royals on the road and little else on the calendar, on Wednesday the 22nd we had our usual lunch visit in Quarryville. From there I took Jenny and Helen to the relative's house in Parkesburg for their annual Thanksgiving Day visit. High school winter sports practices began the previous Friday, on the way home from Parkesburg I stopped in at McCaskey. Freddy Ramos is beginning his sixth year as head basketball coach, the rest of the staff is back intact as well. The boys had scrimmages at Susquehanna Township on the 25th and Wilson on the 28th, I rode along on the bus to Berks County on Tuesday just for the hell of it (it's always a strange feeling traveling on 222 between Lancaster and Reading in a vehicle I'm not driving). The JV team scrimmaged at the district's middle school, the varsity was at the high school itself. Right now the organization has twenty-five total players, thirteen on the Varsity roster. Three are returnees from '22-23, six others played on the JV squad, two are brand-new to the program and two others are returning from a season's absence. The season starts with a tipoff tournament at McCaskey on December 1 and 2 (I am absent on the 2nd for the Royals), the 22-game schedule also features the annual holiday tournament at home in the last week of December. At the Junior Varsity level most teams usually play only sixteen or seventeen games since the varsity plays tournaments and showcase events where the JV is not involved, in a rarity the JPM JV has a full 22-game schedule of its own. It's very unusual and somewhat ambitious but it's not a bad thing, the more games a JV player can play gives him all the more opportunity to develop and that's the whole purpose behind it. Take care, thanks for reading.