December 2008 Archives

Usually the smallest one on the court, York Catholic grad Ashton Bankos is making a fairly big mark so far during her freshman season at Juniata College.

The 5-foot-4 guard, who won three straight state Class AA championships with the Irish, has started all 10 games for the Eagles. She averages 5.8 points and an impressive 3.7 rebounds in 26 minutes of action per game.

In her game on December 18th, Bankos scored a career-high 13 points during Juniata's loss to nationally ranked Messiah College.

Bankos, seen below with her father, York Catholic coach Kevin Bankos, is joined at Juniata (4-6) by familiar YAIAA faces Meagan Raville of Delone Catholic, along with Trinity's Jen Hnatuck and Brittany Rider from Lancaster Catholic.

Japanese macaques soak in a hot spring pool at Jigokudani Monkey Park in the mountains near Yamanouchi Town in Japan's Nagano Prefecture on Dec. 28, 2008. The area is most famous for its so-called "snow monkeys," wild monkeys indigenous to Japan.

We received this letter from Brendan Cregan, who was the boys' soccer coach at Kennard-Dale from 1992-2001:

In reading your list of athletes it was obvious your contacts failed to talk with many people who were around in the 90s. You forgot to mention an athlete at all who easily belongs in your top 10, Sam Absher. Sam is a 1994 graduate who participated in varsity soccer, basketball and baseball. He was a two-time all-county soccer player, and a member of the all-state team in 1994. He led the Rams to two division titles and district appearances in 93 and 94. He left in1994 as Kennard Dale's all-time leading scorer. He was also a member of the 93 Kennard Dale District 3 basketball team and a varsity baseball player as well. How you could pass over Sam is amazing. He was one of the best athletes to go through Kennard-Dale High School, and to not even mention goes to show how well you did the research.

It's different this year because there's more experience and maturity, but mostly because this is their last chance for the seven seniors on the York Suburban girls' basketball team.

"This is it," senior forward Karli Swartz said. "We're not a young team any more. We don't have that excuse any more."

In 2006-07, the Trojans finished the season with a dismal 6-16 record. Last year, Suburban improved by three games to finish 9-13, but it was still not good enough to earn a spot in the postseason. But after winning six of their first nine games to start 2008-09, including a 41-37 victory over Dallastown Friday night, the Trojans have put themselves in good early position to reach the district tournament.

"We have the ability," Swartz said. "We have seven seniors and we have the ability to go out on the floor every night and step up and win."

Happy Holidays. Consider these rankings my gift to you. I know, it's pretty cheap, but it's the thought that counts, right?

Some of you may have already read about my disdain for preseason rankings and how they are basically an exercise in futility. How can you really know much of anything about a team before they step onto the playing surface? Even after the first couple of weeks, it's largely baseless speculation.

Now that the basketball season is about four weeks old, it seems like the right time to take a look at what the area boys and girls teams have done and try and rank them accordingly. As always, I welcome all of you to add your input into the comments section. This is far from an exact science and all opinions are welcome.

The full rankings for both genders can be found after the jump. Right now, I have Malik Genrett (above) and William Penn on top on the boys side and Lau-powered Northeastern No. 1 among the girls.

Once again the York College student advisory committee hit a home run with its Christmas in the Community program.

This past Saturday, each of the 20 Spartan sports programs, along with the cheerleading squad, brought in families from Access York for gifts and fun at the Grumbacher Sport and Fitness Center.

"This event is so much fun and the kids seem to really be into it," Assistant Dean for Athletics and Recreation Sean Sullivan said. "They understand that they are in a position where they can help other people. They do that and have a good time with it as well."

This was the seventh year the SAAC has contributed in helping the community, which goes a long way to show that student-athletes at York College care about a lot more than just themselves and their sports.

"This is a great opportunity for our student-athletes to give back to this community," Assistant Athletic Trainer and SAAC advisor Allison Kunkel said. "To be able to help someone else, especially at this time of year, is very satisfying."

The powers that be made one of the more obvious calls when they recognized Brandon Real as a first-team all-state running back in Class AAA. You could make a decent argument for him as player of the year, but I think they made the right call in picking Brian Baldrige, especially considering Thomas Jefferson won the state title.

There was another West York player that was not selected for either the first or second team who I believe deserves a spot: senior safety Blaine Fissel.

When Real went down with his collarbone injury in the playoffs, the West York defense continued to excel in the second half of the victory over Garden Spot to preserve the shut out and then held Manheim Central to only seven points in the district championship game, allowing the Bulldogs to win despite scoring only 13 points.

Fissel was the leader of that defense and deserves recognition for it, especially when you compare his numbers to some of the players that made the team.

Red Lion coach Steve Schmehl was happy with his team's 59-48 victory over Dallastown, but he was far from thrilled -- particularly with his team's performance from the foul line over the final eight minutes.

The Lions shot a reasonable 15-for-26 from the line during the game, but went 10-for-19 in the fourth quarter. It was still good enough to win the game on Wednesday, but such a performance could sink Red Lion against stronger teams. Since this undersized Lions squad relies on a smothering half-court defense and keeping games relatively low scoring, late free throws are particularly important.

"Our foul shooting was terrible," Schmehl said. "That gave them more possesions because we were missing the front end of 1-and-1."

In a Division I game against South Western last year, guard Matt Bray (above) sank a free throw with no time left on the clock to give the Lions a victory and there is a decent chance the Lions will find themselves in a similar situation at some point this season.

All Penn State fans attending the Rose Bowl on Jan. 1 are being encouraged to wear white.

The Nittany Lions also will wear white as the visiting team in the 95th Rose Bowl, which will begin at 5:10 p.m. ET in Pasadena, Calif.

Penn State fans participated in complete Beaver Stadium "Whiteouts" in victories over Notre Dame in 2007 and Illinois this past season.

It's getting difficult to keep up with all of the All-America honors for Penn State center A.Q. Shipley.

This time it's ESPN.com passing out the praise -- which is rather exclusive considering that it picked only one team of recipients, no second- and third-team choices.

Shipley already has won the Rimington Award as the nation's best center and has been named an All-American by four other organizations, including second-team honors by the Associated Press.

Many area high school basketball teams have some sort of phrase or saying on their warm-ups of T-shirts. Most of the time it's some sort of played-out sports cliche about hard work or hustle. The Red Lion boys' basketball team got a little creative with theirs this season, as I noticed before Wednesday's 59-48 victory over Dallastown.

They include only two words on the back of the warm-ups, one on top of the other. The above word is DEFENSE is big bold block letters. Directly below it is the word offense, noticeably smaller, probably less than half the size of the first word.

I asked junior Spencer McCreary (above) about the meaning behind the words on the shirt.

"There's always the saying that offense wins games and defense wins championships," McCreary said. "But I think for us it's more so that we're going to smother teams defensively and our defense is going to lead to our offense."

The New Oxford boys' basketball team had a solid campaign in 2007-08, finishing 16-8. They would have had a decent shot at qualifying for the PIAA tournament if they hadn't run into a hot York Suburban team fresh off a run to the YAIAA title game in the first round of the District 3 Class AAA tournament.

Even though All-Star Derick Gallaher (above) graduated, the Colonials return most of their top players, including guards Ryan Luckenbaugh and Evan Stoltzfoos and 6-foot-8 center Carson Miller and looked poised to have an even more successful year. The problem is, the Colonials lost three of their first four games, including a 54-point defeat against William Penn.

Part of it is tough scheduling. New Oxford had to face two of the top teams in the league in Red Lion and William Penn early on. But there is another major element at play according to coach Jim Zinn.

So as if having to deal with the Eric Devendorf situation wasn't enough, Syracuse men's basketball coach Jim Boeheim came up against the final straw that pushed him to violence -- a faulty microphone.

It was after a win over Long Beach State and you can see him start off calmly. But a man can only be pushed so much . . . . I can only imagine if it had been after Monday's stunning loss to Cleveland State.

In other fun news of the day . . . what does this have to do with a current Tampa Bay Buccaneer?

A pair of local swimmers have helped the York College men's team to an awesome 8-1 start to the season.

Clark Arnold of Northeastern and Dover alum Richard Janosky (pictured below competing at their respective high schools) have been solid contributors for the Spartans, who recently captured a tri-meet against always tough Salisbury and Goucher College.

After the William Penn boys' basketball team beat New Oxford 101-47 on Friday night to win its fourth consecutive game to open the season, senior Malik Generett made it a point to talk about the Bearcats rallying around coach Troy Sowers.

"We feel as though we're trying to do something good for Coach Sowers," Generett said. "We're out here running everyday, basically doing for him in addition to us."

Prior to the season, there were some questions as to whether Sowers (above) would even be back this year.

An athletic director from another area school emailed a York Daily Record/Sunday News reporter and wrote that he had heard William Penn had hired somebody to replace Sowers. After making some phone calls to verify, I found out this athletic director was wrong, although there were some other applicants that William Penn apparently looked at. You can read about it here.

Sowers is only in his third season at William Penn, but the Bearcats barely qualified for the District 3 Class AAAA tournament in his first year and went 1-3 in postseason action in 2007-08, including a loss in the YAIAA quarterfinals. Judging from what Generett has told me, it seems like the Bearcats have a renewed focus and intend to prove not only that they can do big things on the basketball court, but that Sowers is the best man to help them do it.

If you didn't get a chance to see the William Penn boys' basketball team tear apart the New Oxford defense Friday night in a 101-47 victory, you can get a pretty good idea of what happened by checking out the video above by esteemed YDR/SN photographer/videographer Kate Penn. At the end of the 90-second piece you can see the euphoric reaction from the Bearcats and their fans when Chemin Lambert scored his team's 99th and 100th points of the night.

It's not like William Penn earns anything extra in the standings by reaching 100 points instead of 95 or 90 or even 48, in this case. The win would have counted the same in all of those circumstances. But all you have to do is look at how the gym erupted after Lambert's basket to recognize that there is some greater meaning in reaching triple digits.

Coach Troy Sowers said it wasn't a number he was thinking about, but it remains a testament to his reserves playing hard the entire game.

"I think 100 is just a goal that basketball fans have when they come to a game," Sowers said. "It very rarely happens. I didn't think about it a bit coming into this game... It's just a general basketball term -- you try to score a hundred. I didn't think it was a significant number. My job is to coach the whole game and that's what I owe these kids. I owe my second string -- just like I owe my first string -- to coach them basketball. They work hard and they value their time and that's why we scored a lot of points tonight."

Senior forward Malachi Leonard had a specific team in mind when he talked about the significance of reaching 100.

On Friday I received an email stating there was a change in scoring of Thursday's Dover at South Western girls' swimming and diving meet.

It seems that two of the host Mustangs ended up swimming the 100 freestyle in the wrong lanes because of what South Western coach Bill Sterner said was an entry mistake that he made.

The rules state that when that happens both swimmers are disqualified, only in this case the lost points reversed the outcome of the meet and what was originally a 96-88 South Western victory now has Dover getting the win, 93-91.

But here is the incredible part of the story: This error was brought to the my attention by Sterner (pictured below) himself.

Of course, this doesn't surprise me in the least.

It only took one game for the York Catholic girls' basketball team to equal its loss total from last season.

Coming off a 34-1 campaign in which the Fighting Irish won their third consecutive PIAA Class AA championship, York Catholic opened the 2008-09 season with a 59-36 loss at home to Trinity on Saturday afternoon. Readers of the York Daily Record/Sunday News may not have been aware of the loss, since no one from York Catholic contacted to paper with the result, but the Carlisle Sentinel was there to cover the game and you can read about the details here.

The defeat certainly shouldn't be any cause for major alarm among York Catholic fans. The Fighting Irish's only loss last season came against Trinity in the regular season before they beat the Shamrocks twice in the playoffs. Because Trinity has been moved up to Class AAA this season, York Catholic won't have to worry about playing them in the postseason during its quest for a fourth title.

Nonetheless, it's still worth looking at the way the Fighting Irish lost on Saturday. Even though York Catholic returns four of its top six players from last year including leading scorer and first-team all-state selection Kady Schrann, there are some areas where it looks like the Fighting Irish need to improve if they want to keep their PIAA title streak going.

The Central York girls' basketball team isn't the only YAIAA squad that lost its top players to graduation last year. They just might be the only one which starts no seniors and has a starting lineup that includes two sophomores and a freshman.

The Panthers finished 15-10 last season behind the play of first-team YAIAA All-Star guard Adrianna Gillespie (12.3 points per game, five steals per game) and second-team YAIAA All-Star center Aurielle Mosley (12.5 points per game, 12.5 rebounds per game), but was unable to do well enough in the District 3 Class AAAA tournament to qualify for PIAA competition. Both Mosley and Gillespie have graduated and first-year coach Andrew Stiffler must rebuild with a group of young players.

"My goal right now is to take it one day at a time and stay positive and try to improve every single day," Stiffler said following Tuesday's 62-36 loss to Northeastern. "If we do that, then we'll get to a good point. I have to remember that because we do have a young team and I have to stay positive and just try and improve every day."

The biggest weapon Central brings back from last year is junior forward Dee Dee Mosley (above), who gives the Panthers size in the paint at a height of 6-feet and scored eight points in Tuesday's loss. Fellow junior Katie Garvin showed she can score from the perimeter, racking up 13 points against the Bobcats and freshman Hayley Harrold looked promising in her home debut, chipping in six points in the losing effort.

All Autumn Lau has to do is score points at the same pace as she has done over her first three varsity seasons and the Northeastern senior forward will be the new all-time scoring leader in YAIAA girls' basketball.

Lau, who will play Division I basketball at St. Francis College in New York next year with her twin sister Amber, entered the 2008-09 season with 1,758 points to sit exactly 500 points behind the record of 2,258 set by Fairfield's Lauren Beckley. The senior forward averaged 24.1 points per game last season and has already scored 64 points in three games this season to increase her career total to 1,822.

Even if you use the more conservative estimate of 21.3 points per game, which is what Lau is averaging so far this season, the Northeastern senior will become the fifth YAIAA girls' basketball player to crack the 2,000 point barrier by the 12th game of the season.

The others are Beckley (Fairfield, 2006), Barb DeShields with 2,175 (William Penn, 1990), Meredith Cox with 2,097 (Delone Catholic, 2006) and Meggan Quinn with 2,044 (Red Lion, 2006).

The Northeastern (AAA) and York Catholic (AA) girls' basketball teams come into the 2008 seasons as legitimate PIAA title contenders for good reasons -- both have a majority of starters back from a successful 2007-08 campaign, including the leading scorers.

But even if the Bobcats and the Fighting Irish pick up major hardware, it won't be a drastic improvement from last year because both teams already had success on the district and state level last season (or in York Catholic's case, won both titles and finished with a 29-1 record). So which YAIAA teams have the best chance of making the biggest net improvement from last season?

From what I saw Saturday night, I would guess Spring Grove (AAAA) and Eastern York (AAA).

The Golden Knights edged the Rockets, 45-38 in an ugly game, typical for an early-season matchup, but both squads showed potential for major improvement this season.

I know football is the most popular sport in the United States and West York's historic run to the PIAA semifinals "uplifted a school, a community and set the bar" for future area players. That doesn't mean I can't get excited about the arrival basketball season though, right?

The major reason why basketball is my favorite sport to cover (and play for that matter) is the amount of excitement down the stretch of a close game. It's unmatched in any other sport as far as I'm concerned. Momentum can change so quickly. No lead is safe. And even when it seems like all hope is lost with the buzzer about to sound, you still have a chance to make a shot from any corner of the court and turn a loss into a victory.

Don't believe me? Watch the video above.

Until Brandon Real suffered a broken collarbone two weeks ago, West York rarely had its skill players racking up major playing time on both offense and defense.

Corey Harris would take some carries here and there and snag some receptions, but most of his playing time would be at cornerback. Blaine Fissel and Dan Gay have caught several passes this season, but no one in the West York receiving corps has even half the number of catches as leading receiver Nate Jacobs. Neither Jacobs nor quarterback Alex George ever played on the other side of the ball, and early in the season the decision was made to keep Real exclusively on offense.

When Real went down, that changed. Now the West York coaching staff has to strike a balance between Harris and Fissel at running back, staying with the more effective runner but still keeping both of them fresh enough to play stellar defense.

The West York football team usually focuses on offense during its Tuesday practice, but this week they spent the last half-hour or so working on defense in anticipation of Friday's PIAA Class AAA semifinal against Thomas Jefferson.

Coach Ron Miller wasn't thrilled with what he saw and he informed his players as such.

Briefly stopping the practice and calling his players together, an Miller impassioned Miller expressed his disappointment. He told the Bulldogs they needed to show more intensity. He said they shouldn't be satisfied with winning a district title. He demanded a better effort for the rest of the session and the following few days.

It wasn't anything too far out of the ordinary -- just a high school football coach keeping his team in line. What struck me in particular was that Miller boiled success in high school football down to three basic elements.

The Shooting Irish Lacrosse Club is hosting an all-you-can-eat pancake breakfast fundraiser from 7 a.m. until noon on Saturday at York Catholic High School, 601 E. Springettsbury Ave., York.

Tickets are $5 for adults and $3 for children under age 8. Admission is free for children age 2 and under.

For tickets or more information, call Monica at 515-1202 or go online to www.shootingirishlacrosse.org.

Meet Brian Baldrige, the leading rusher of West York's PIAA Class AAA semifinal opponent Thomas Jefferson. He scored all of the touchdowns in Thomas Jefferson's win over Strong Vincent in last week's PIAA Class AAA quarterfinals. Two weeks earlier in the postseason, Baldrige ran for 382 yards on 32 carries to help the Jaguars earn their sixth consecutive WPIAL championship.

He also said at Thomas Jefferson, "they expect you to win a state title." The Jaguars have won two since 2004 and are two games away from a third. Baldrige told me that whether or not you're able to earn the crown is "what you're measured on when you graduate from T.J." I told him that sounds like a lot of pressure.

"It is, but our coaches really take it off us because they work us hard in the summer and that's how we keep making it back to the state playoffs," Baldrige said. "We work harder than any other team and it pays off."

West York has never reached the state semifinals in football at the Class AAA level and on Friday will take on a team that won the crown last year and will view this season as a disappointment if they fail to do it again. Although the Bulldogs will undoubtedly fight hard to stay alive and earn a state title of their own, they seemingly have a lot less pressure on them this week. It's sort of like they have nothing to lose.

I asked Baldrige whether he thought the lack of pressure might be an advantage for West York.

One thing that has been notably absent from West York's playoff run to date has been any sort of trickery in the play calling. Not that the Bulldogs (13-1) have needed any gimmicks -- they've been doing just fine with their standard game plan. But considering the team has mixed it up before (running back Brandon Real threw a touchdown pass during one regular season game), one can only wonder if Ron Miller and his staff will draw up something for Friday's PIAA Class AAA semifinal against defending state champion Thomas Jefferson (13-1).

The video above is currently my favorite trick play of all time. Comedian Rob Huebel claims to have hatched up this play while guest-coaching during a recent youth football game but considering the description here, he might just be joking.

Anyway, I realize the play would be less likely to succeed on the high school level, but I think it might be able to create enough confusion to work.