State High soccer follow-up

Ginger Woolridge’s seven game shutout streak came to an end as Norwin HS scored on this play to defeat State High 1-0 to eliminate the Little Lions, as they are called, from the PIAA playoffs.

A fraction of a second after this picture was taken, Ginger collided with the other State High girl (in white) which left the goal wide open for the Norwin girl to score. Game story here.

Ginger was also the centerpiece of a game preview article in the paper on Saturday that talked about the 600+ minute scoreless streak that she had going.

Most of the State High team, including Ginger, will be back next year and they expect to contend for the State title.

Had to root against my old high school (sort of)

Now that Central Bucks is split into three school districts, does anyone know where Chalfont kids go?

Tuesday night, the State College high school girls soccer team met Central Bucks South in the state soccer playoffs. State High’s goalie is my buddy Randy Woolridge’s youngest daughter Ginger. The game was played at Central Mountain HS which is about 40 miles from here so I headed over to watch it.

Ginger had a great game including a spectacular save with just minutes to go that preserved a 1-0 win for State High. It was her seventh straight shutout. They will now face a Pittsburgh area school in the state quarterfinals at 1 pm on Saturday. The game is in Hollidaysburg PA about 45 miles from here at 1 pm and I’m going to try to squeeze it in.

I say squeeze it in because the day is a very full one. Penn State hosts #4 Syracuse at 11:30 am Saturday in the opening round of the NCAA Field Hockey Championships. Barring OT, the game will end about 1 PM and I’ll be able to rush to Hollidaysburg for the State High game. That game should end about 3 PM, which will give me just enough time to get home to watch the Penn State at Ohio State football game (I’ll miss the first 15 minutes but that just means I’ll be able to skip all the commercials during the first half as I use TiVo to catch up). Then I’ll rush over to Rec Hall to catch the PSU women’s volleyball team taking on Illinois in a huge match (Illinois defeated Penn State in a match earlier this year – PSU needs the win to reclaim first place in the Big Ten). I absolutely love the opportunity to catch all these sporting events.

Note to Gary and Charlotte: The Big Ten Network will have the PSU/Illinois match on live at 6PM Saturday. Should be a good one.

“Unstoppable”

Just saw this movie trailer and it reminded me of something.

Last year, Penn State opened their basketball season up with a home game against Penn. As usual, I was at the game. My seats are located behind the visitors bench and just across the aisle from the visiting teams section (visitors get about five rows of tickets immediately behind the team bench.

During one of the timeouts, there was a Subway promotion. For the promotion the cheerleaders encourage fans to stand and cheer while they throw wrapped subs into the stands. For some reason I must have been particularly hungry that night because I was up cheering for a sub and I don’t even like Subway. As I’m standing there, one cheerleader breaks away from the bunch and comes running up my aisle. She stops a couple of rows in front of me and actually hands her sub to a guy sitting on the end of the row in the visitor’s section.

When I see this I start half complaining to my buddy in the seat next to me saying “you know, it’s bad enough that sometimes, when they have promotions like these, they wind up throwing the item into the visitor’s section, but it’s downright stupid of them to actually hand something to a visitor; I really would have liked that sub”.

A minute or two later, my buddy nudges me and says “I think I know why that guy got the sub.” “Why?” I ask. “Take a close look” he says, “I think it’s Denzel Washington”.

Sure enough, it was. All of a sudden, I didn’t feel so bad that the cheerleader chose Denzel over me. 🙂

It turns out that Denzel’s son, Malcolm (guess who he was named after), was a reserve on the Penn basketball team. Denzel was actually in the State College area filming the above “Unstoppable” and took time out from the movie to come over and watch the game. FTR, Penn State won and Malcolm didn’t play (he did get some time the rest of the year averaging 4 mpg).

Crazy Few Weeks!

Two weeks ago Steve’s 90 year old mother fell in the nursing home and broke her hip. Off to the hospital we were for surgery. Then, last Wednesday at 7:30 AM  Dawn called doubled over in pain. I went over to take care of the kids and after a mis-diagnosis at a clinic (sent home with pain-killers), Dawn went to the emergency room. By 11:00 PM she was having her appendix removed.

It’s been a crazy few weeks, but everyone is home and recuperating!

Battle of Battle Creek

The “battle” was last weekend and I’ve waited a week for Ron or Steve F. to post this, but I guess they’re sore losers! Yes, Steve B. is the new “Fall Family Champ”! Can you believe that? Steve F. and Ron must have really had an off weekend!

A couple of familiar faces in this video

I stopped by a local music festival this morning to see Natalie Berrena sing with one of her groups, Pure Cane Sugar. To my surprise, I ran into ex-girlfriend Diane Wooding at the show (you can catch her in the lower left corner of the video)

Diane is back in town this weekend for her high school reunion and stopped down for the show because she knows Natalie (they were roommates for a week at Pat Daugherty’s place in St Martin – remember this post and photo?)

Father’s Day

Spent the day at our local minor league stadium.  Charlotte’s softball teamed was honored before the game, accompanying the home team as the players were announced.  Everybody had a good, long day at the park.  Lex got a foul ball, and all kids got to run the bases and play catch in the outfield after the game.