Friday night hockey on Penn Street, the Royals played the first of what will eventually be four straight home games versus the Worcester Railers. It was "Taylor Swift Night" as the organization celebrated the world-famous Berks County native. The visitors from Massachusetts took a 1-0 lead into the second period, the Royals tied it and took the lead on goals by Shane Sellar forty-four seconds apart. At the period's midpoint Sellar finished his natural hattrick making it 3-1 at the intermission. Tag Bertuzzi upped the advantage to three early in the third but the Railers answered in kind, an insurance marker from Brayden Guy late in the game put away a 4-2 Royals win. Parker Gahagen was the goalie of record as the Royals improve to 7-12-2, 6-4-1 at home. The club plays its next three on the road, after the holiday recess Worcester returns for a three-in-three starting Friday the 29th. The basketball team traveled to Penn Manor on Friday in my absence for the first game of league play and lost badly, on Saturday afternoon they climbed right back into the saddle with the short bus trip just over the city line into the neighborhood of Rossmere. Freddy was the JV coach at Lancaster Catholic before he came to McCaskey, it's always been a goal of his to establish an annual game between the two schools. The JV squads played stand-alone games for two seasons before the first JV/varsity date happened at McCaskey in December of '22, on this day at LCHS it was a tripleheader with the freshman teams meeting at 1:00. It was a clean sweep for JPM with victories for all three teams, the JV evened their mark at 3-3 and the varsity won as well but it wasn't easy. We trailed by five at the quarter and three at halftime, after a dead-even third quarter the club exploded for twenty-seven points in the fourth and won 64-56. De'Andre Jones had the big day with sixteen, Jared Kumah and Kaiden Russell had eleven each. Nemias Tirado and Cesar Peguero each scored seven points, Aiden Burgess had five, Eddie Bencosme had four big points in the final quarter and Kamryn Pugh rounded out the book with three. The record stands at 2-4 overall, league play continues on the 20th with a bus trip to Lebanon. Take care, thanks for reading.
