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).

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!

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.

102 and counting

The Penn State women’s volleyball team racked up their record setting 102nd straight win and third straight national championship with an absolutely thrilling 5 set win over Texas in the title game on Saturday night. I also heard a rumor that they gained a new young fan from Montclair NJ.

Their championship match was one of the most compelling sporting events that I have ever watched. The girls started slow and dropped the first two sets of the match, marking the first time in the 100+ win streak that they had ever fallen behind 0-2. But they fought they way back, eventually winning the fifth set 15-13 in a set that had both teams trading points back and forth. I’ve heard from a bunch of people who just turned the game on for the novelty of the championship but were overwhelmed with the athleticism of the participants. They’re real believers now.

The match has become an instant ESPN classic and was already rebroadcast three times yesterday. It will also be shown again on Saturday at 10 pm EST Saturday (9 pm CST). It’s worth a view even though you know who won.

It’s hard to appreciate how tall and good these athletes are. I shared this photo with Gary yesterday. It shows PSU coach (and Fremd High grad) Russ Rose with his four first team All-Americans, from left to right Ariel Wilson, Megan Hodge, Coach Rose, Blair Brown, and Alisha Glass, at their All American Awards banquet Friday night. Russ is my size but he looks like a shrimp in this photo. The girls heights in order are: 6’3″, 6’3″, 6’5″, 6’0″.

I’ve gone over to the Dark Side

Actually broke down and purchased my first Apple product last week – an iPhone.

I must admit that I’m pretty impressed with the technology. One of the more impressive apps is one called AutoStitch which stitches together photos taken with the phone enabling you to produce some pretty good panoramas with the phone. Here are some photos I took at yesterday’s Spike’s baseball game.

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The phone also take some pretty decent video. I decided to try out the video feature for the first time when one of the Spikes came up to bat in the eighth inning. I got pretty lucky as he hit the game winning home run.

And incredibly, I hear you can even make phone calls on this thing (although I haven’t tried that yet)