A little of this and a little of that in sports

It’s been a while since I have commented on anything in the world of sports. The winter sports season, although it still feels like winter, is over and the bats, gloves, javelins and shot puts are out.


First off, congrats to the Columbia athletes for all the hard work they put in over the winter. They worked hard and improved as the season went on.

Second, congrats to senior wrestler Marcus Fischer, for representing Columbia at the state wrestling championships.

Yes, it was not all rosy for the winter sports season in 2010-11, but I prefer to look ahead not back.

A few weeks back, I attended the basketball banquet and a couple of things stuck with me that night.

I, myself have seen it developing this year as well. I think the championship drought on the hill will end next season in a big way. I heard some coaches speak that night and a couple of senior players, about the need to get the “Colunbia Chip” back on our shoulders. Yes, there is the ability to win multiple chanpionships next season, but it comes down to a few things.

One is the off-season commitment of the athletes who will wear the crimson and gold. Not to be labor the point, but championships are not won from September to November or December to February or March to May, they are won on the off-season. That means hard work in the off season. If that happens, only then will the school on the hill have to add banners to the gym rafters.

It’s possible.

There has been a bunch of other things that have happened in the past few weeks/months as well.

First, at the local level.

I had heard the rumors before it became public knowledge that Lancaster Catholic was looking to move from Section 3 to Section 1 in football. Yes, its about time they step up to the plate and make a move that will drastically improve the quality of sports in the L-L League.

Will Columbia miss playing Catholic? Yes, because it was a good rivalry, although Columbia hasn’t beaten then in about eight years.

Will. Catholic succeed in Section 1? It’s a different brand of football, more physical. Would it have been better to jump up to Section 2 first? Probably.

I won’t comment any farther about the “r” issue, but there were some comments made in the newspaper story that was a little upsetting. One was a comment made about the lack of competition in Section 3 as Catholic’s front line players only got to play half a game in league play. I saw a few games where the front line players were in late into the game up 35, 40, 45 points. Not a great way to develop depth for the big move. And if Section 3 hurt them, I thought they did well in the post-season the last two years.

I would hope Catholic would consider a move in basketball as well.

Speaking of moves, heard that Steel-High will be playing Class A in boys’ basketball in the next schedule cycle at the request of the Mid-Penn Conference. They were having trouble scheduling boys’ games in one division/class and girls in another.

Moving back to the L-L League, finally happy to see Hempfield as a new football coach in Ron Zieber, a former coach at Boyertown and Exeter. Don’t know the guy, never heard of him, but he better be the best thing since sliced bread. That’s because of who the Black Knights passed over – Jim Cantafio and Mark Evans.

I thought given the success of the other Hempfield fall programs (state champs in soccer and volleyball), they would make a splash with the football hiring.

Well, they put two solid coaches through the interview ringers, only not to consider either one in the end. Both are solid football minds. Sure, Jimmy C must have had some baggage attached to the old resume, but football-wise, he’s smart. The same goes for Evans, who I happen to think is on the top five of coaches in the L-L League behind Mike Williams and Dave Gingrich.

Given the fact that a new coach wasn’t named until two weeks ago, don’t look for the Black Knights to get back to being winners this season, unless this guy is a miracle worker.

Now finally, the other day I was in a discussion about school colors. The talk centered on how do I want to put it, alterations to those colors. I tend to agree say if a schools are red and black; crimson and gold or purple and gold, that’s what they are. Enough said.

I'm too much of a traditionalist

Call me a traditionalist or an old fart, but I have a hard time when I see teams, including some of my favorites wearing these alternate color uniforms.


To explain what I am talking about, I’ll use one of my favorite teams as an example – The Eagles, who sometime without much luck breakout the old black uniforms. I know it’s a marketing tool and sells their merchandise. I do have some black Eagles’ gear and have come to live with it, but don’t like it.

To take it one step farther, I will have problems with basketball teams that wear black sneakers and black socks. Heck, I have a problem with teams that wear white socks and you can’t see them over the top of their shoes.

I also have a pet peeve with teams that don’t wear their uniform pants right. And don’t get me started on how people wear hats. Okay, please stop the rantings.

I can’t right now.

What I do have a problem with are teams that want to change their colors and even their mascots to something that shouldn’t even be an issue and I don’t care how much success a team or school is having.

I can remember perhaps 15 years ago or so when a former Columbia High School principal attempted to change our school’s mascot from the Crimson Tide to the Bulldogs. That administrator even went as far as to order some shirts and other items. The community was in such an uproar and packed a school board meeting to air their feelings.

Well, the bulldog idea was put out to pasture.

Which leads to me to school colors. Whether it be crimson and gold in Columbia’s case; green and white for Donegal; blue and gold for Eastern and yes, even purple and gold for Lancaster Catholic, they are the chosen school colors.

What bothers is when I see our local schools wear a color other than school colors.

I have to ask why? Why do we need to say mix another color, say back into the uniform mix. Its not a school color.

I won’t say this is happening yet around here, but I would hope that if any of our coaches try to change school colors for say uniforms to something other to crimson and gold, the thought should be dismissed right away.

Black is not a school color in Columbia and should never be.

We wear crimson and gold!

Enough said.

Where's the passion?

I am a huge basketball fan. If I were able to drive right now, I’d be out every night. Right now as I write this, I start and stop writing glued to the NCAA Tournament and some big early games.


While I picked Kansas to beat West Virginia in the two offices pools I have entered, I really love the high school playoffs, which end next week.

Last night I was able to make the trek to Coatesville for Hempfield’s second round PIAA playoff game with LaSalle College, the District 12 champs.

Columbia played there before and I can remember doing a game or two when I worked with WSBA Radio.

Now the gym bears the name of Ross Kersey, a coach at Coatesville. I heard the PA announcer say that during the introductions. What I found amazing is, that unless I missed it outside or even inside, I failed to see a mention of this. I mean, who walk into the gym on the hill here in town, you know who it is named after. Okay, enough of the soap box.

But in the many years of traveling from gym to gym and to the state finals whether it be in Hershey or State College, one of the things I marvel at is the passion of the fans, whether it be the student bodies or the adults.

I’ve seen some amazing student body support over the years, not only at basketball, but wrestling and football. I’ve commented on it as well, both good and bad.

The same goes for the adults.

But what continues to amaze me, no matter where I go, is that passion.

I will say this and believe it that Columbia has the most passionate and somewhat knowledgeable fans in all of high school sports, but mostly with the adults. The students are getting better, but they still have a lot of work to do when it comes to the passion of the adults.

I go to games not involving Columbia and I just marvel in the last of passion of the fans.

I’ll use last night as an example. I thought the officiating was great for the first half as they called just two fouls. It did change a little bit in the second half, but there was no one screaming or shall I say encouraging the officials about their calls or to make a call.

I just thought the crowd was too laid back for a state playoff game. I know it was about an hour drive to Coatesville for the game and it was a 6 o’clock start and it was a beautiful day out, but for most of the game, you could actually hear yourself talk (no I didn’t answer myself).

Perhaps too, we from Columbia over the years may have developed an “us against them” mentality, I don’t know. Or, it could be the fact that all of our players come from the same area and not from three or four boroughs or townships and they don’t mesh together.

But it’s very enjoyable to go to these non-Columbia games and being able to sit back, relax and enjoy a game, instead being on the edge of your seat, worrying about the outcome and taking an hour or two to calm down after you get back from the game.

I miss that passion at other games.

I’m proud to be a River Rat, oops, a Columbia fan to be politically correct and glad we all have that passion to support our teams in the good times and bad.

My thoughts on the playoffs

For obvious reasons, I only got to one basketball playoff game this year and really don’t see my seeing anymore games this season, which is something I’m not use to. But I am adapting.


I have followed the playoffs with other venues and two of the best have been Jeff Reinhart and Keith Schweigert from Lancasteronline. The others don’t like taking comments from fans and are slow to give you the action.

With that in mind (this is the second attempt to write this because I hit the wrong button during the first attempt), there needs to be some changes in the playoffs from the formats, to the sites, perhaps how you seed teams and how the teas get into the playoffs.

When I was younger in this business and even when I was a student at Columbia High School, you had to win a certain percentage of games to get in the playoffs. Back then, the Catholic schools had their own tournament and there weren’t the glut of private schools. There also wasn’t all of the classes.

So, it changed from having to win a certain percentage of games to letting everyone in to teams with wining records and to fill out the brackets, teams with under .500 records. Most of those teams are in the lower two classes, AA and A. Yes, there are some mis-matches, but those teams are only following the rules.

Should there be changes in how teams qualify for the playoffs? That’s a tough question because I’ve seen teams with losing records do well. Take the Columbia boys team this year. They won six or seven games, yet they battled three teams – Lancaster Catholic, Lancaster Mennonite and Reading Central Catholic, all teams that played in the finals tough. I also feel they were a couple of baskets away from wining 10-12 games.

I don’t want to turn this into a Catholic, public and private school debate, but certain ones should be playing up and others should be playing down.

Even with power rating system, some teams because they don’t play that tough of a schedule and get rewarded for that. So, there are no easy answers to changing that, but perhaps the “big” or “real” leagues like the L-L, York, Mid-Penn and Berks should be guaranteed berths, while the others, who still have trouble walking and chewing gum so to speak, must actually qualify. I don’t know.

I thought this was a down year for the L-L League, yet they ended up with three boys and a girls team in the finals, but didn’t win a title.

Of those teams from the L-L that played in the finals or will advance to the state playoffs (okay, I still can’t figure out why there is a week off), three could do well in the tournament – Mennonite girls, Catholic boys, who come out of the week and Hempfield. I would suspect the Eastern boys will go a long way too.

I did look at the PIAA pairings this a.m. Tough break for the Trinity boys – they win a district title and draw Strawberry Mansion. Mennonite boys fall in the finals and they get the winner of a play-in game. What’s wrong with that?

Also read a lot about the sites for the game. There’s something with that. I saw a consi game where Delone and Hanover had to go to Carlisle to play. Wow.

It appears schools aren’t allowing the games to be played at their schools. Did not see any games at L-L schools with huge gyms such as Garden Spot, CV, Warwick or McCaskey. Here’s a thought and they do it in other sports, why not through at least through the first two rounds award the higher seeds with a home game. It would be a reward and it would also help District Three with a problem of finding schools. Okay, you wouldn’t be able to play doubleheaders, but would be something to consider.

I like playing games in the big venues such as the Giant Center, but, why not save that arena for the finals. I saw a crowd shot the other night and I could count the fans on my hands and one foot. And if they want to use the big arena in Hershey, why not use the old arena as well.

But District Three has to be losing its shirts on playing so many games at the Giant Center, but I don’t know.

But I do think its time to tweak things a little and make the tournament that much better.