Let's Go Matt!

Today and tomorrow are "tough" days for me.  For thirty years I served as chief statistician for the PIAA state basketball play-offs at Hershey.  It was always a challenging but exciting two days since I had eight games to work and the pressure at times was intense.  But it was fun and I always looked forward to it.  But three years ago they moved the games to State College and our table crew from Hershey was replaced by folks from Penn State.  I still miss those two days - watching on TV is just not as much fun.  But it is even harder this year since something is happening that I always wished would happen.  One of the local teams, Lampeter-Strasburg, has made the finals - the culmination of a dream season.  And what makes it harder is that their coach, Matt Wieand, is a good friend and is also a deacon in our church.  He plays on our church softball team.  His wife Katie has a beautiful trained voice and has been in many musical productions, including lead roles at the Fulton Theater.  They are a great couple and they love and serve the Lord.  I would have loved to be there working and watching Matt coach his team.  Unfortunately, Matt will face a major challenge in the state finals.  He is matched against the number one team in the state - a team that has only lost one game and has four girls who have received scholarships to play for major universities.  This opponent, Archbishop Catholic, is from Philadelphia.  This is the first time in the play-offs for them since the PIAA just opened the play-offs this year to the Philadelphia Catholic League.  Unfortunately, the PIAA play-offs are now very skewed against the public schools.  They are now controlled by the private schools, especially the Catholic schools.  This year there are 16 teams competing for eight state titles.  Nine of them are Catholic schools, two are private charter schools and only five are public schools.  Three of these five are the large city public schools such as York.  The Catholic and private schools have their choice of the top players - they claim they don't recruit but they draw from all over, while the public schools can only draw from their district.  It just isn't fair and the public schools, like Lampeter-Strasburg, seldom get to the finals anymore and when they do get there they are often outclassed by the private schools.   So Matt's team is a definite underdog tomorrow night.  But no matter what happens, they've had a dream season that most public schools never experience.  And who knows, maybe that dream season has one more miracle game to go.  Matt and his team really deserve that for advancing to this point against all odds.  Unfortunately, I won't be there to share the excitement - I wish this would have happened a few years earlier.  But I will be watching on TV on PCN, at 6 pm, Saturday night.   Go Matt, go!