What Will Survive Basketball’s Cruelest Month — And What Will Survive Forever (as Hempfield’s Players Will Learn)

by gordie | Mar 16, 2023 | High School Sports

The yellow school bus, No. 40, departed from the rear of Reading’s Geigle Complex at 9:35 Wednesday night, destination Landisville. It carried members of the Hempfield boys’ basketball team, their season having ended a little while earlier in an alley fight of a PIAA...

Manheim Central, Bedraggled No More, Continues to Go Knock, Knock, Knocking on Respectability’s Door

by gordie | Mar 4, 2023 | High School Sports

The odd postscript to Manheim Central’s loss to Exeter in Thursday’s District Three 5A boys’ basketball championship game was that the Barons’ locker room became an escape room. And head coach Charlie Fisher and his staff were having a hard time, ya know, escaping. No...

Life as a Corrections Officer: For Former Warwick Hoops Star Dennis Hurd, It’s Always a Matter of Having Eyes Wide Open

by gordie | Aug 27, 2022 | College Basketball, High School Sports

There was reportedly a murder in January at California’s High Desert State Prison. And another in February. And another in July. There was also reportedly a riot there in April. “It can be dangerous, but I don’t look at it that way,” Dennis Hurd said recently over the...

A Driven Coach, a Resourceful Star and a Connected Cast: How Lancaster Catholic Ran the Table in 2002-03

by gordie | Mar 7, 2022 | High School Sports

NOTE: With Lampeter-Strasburg 27-0 heading into the PIAA Tournament, here is a look back at the only Lancaster County team to finish as an undefeated state champion — Lancaster Catholic’s 2002-03 club, which went 35-0. This piece originally ran Sunday on...

In New Book, Kent Babb Ventures Across the River to Tell a Tale of Hope and Heroism, Amid Despair

by gordie | Aug 9, 2021 | High School Sports

It is hardly overstatement to say that Brice Brown is a hero, as he often represents the best hope for the football players he coaches at Edna Karr High School, in the rugged Algiers section of New Orleans. That he has also made them wildly successful on the field is...

Buddy Glover leaves behind footprints that can never be erased

by gordie | Feb 16, 2021 | High School Sports

Among other things, Leon “Buddy” Glover was known for walking everywhere — for lacing up his trademark black hightop Chucks and venturing out from his Green Street home in Lancaster. Didn’t matter how far he had to go. Didn’t matter if someone offered a ride....