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Scholastic ADs having a tough time

It has to be hard to be an athletic director in 2020. Last week, Tyrone learned its high school football game at Clearfield was postponed at 11 a.m. the same day the Golden Eagles were supposed to play. It was picture day at Tyrone, and I have to imagine several players were wearing their jerseys in school but never got a chance to wear them that night. In Philipsburg, head football coach Jeff Vroman didn’t find out his team wasn’t having their senior night until almost 3 p.m., just hours before the ceremony was set to begin. Both games were postponed due to a possible positive ...

Lambour raced to inclusion:

Of the countless Division I athletes Blair County has produced over the years, Tim Lambour’s experience was perhaps the most unique when it came to racial relations. Lambour was a basketball standout at Bishop Guilfoyle, helping lead the 1970 Marauders to the Pennsylvania Catholic ...

Savor your football game this weekend

You Tube Another season of high school football previews with Michael Boytim and Scott Franco of the Mirror is now on the Mirror Channel on You Tube. Check it out today. The day thousands of athletes across the area have been waiting for all summer has finally arrived, and while the circumstances certainly aren’t perfect, it’s important for everyone involved to appreciate what we do have. We have high school football. Soon, we’ll have scholastic soccer, cross country and girls volleyball. Our paper has already been running high school golf and girls tennis roundups for the past ...

Gazing into (shattered) crystal ball

This is supposed to be the most special time of the year. The calendar flips to September, summer vacation is in the rear-view mirror, the kids are back in school, the cooler fall air begins to replace the August heat. And you pack the car, hopefully with the Mirror Gameday in tow for a relaxing tailgate, and you resume your tradition of attending or watching Penn State football. Of course, we know that isn’t the case today as the last six months have painfully taught us what’s not going to be in 2020. But what was going to be? In the early days of spring preparation, ...

PIAA needs to keep using common sense

Credit the PIAA for last week’s overwhelming decision – by 25-5 vote — to go against Gov. Wolf’s recommendation to keep high school sports on the sidelines until Jan. 1. The PIAA obviously values the high school sports experience and all that goes with it — the hard work, the pursuit of dreams, the scholarship opportunities, the achievements and, yes, coping with disappointment — more than Wolf, and after gathering sentiment from its thousands of constituents, it sided with the vast majority. I am not here to debate the dangers of the coronavirus. We see it every day ...

NFL scare: A reminder of uncertainty

Up until this weekend, the biggest news out of NFL training camps was that there hadn’t been any big news. No wave of star players testing positive for COVID-19. No mass outbreaks of the virus discovered despite tens of thousands of tests. That changed — if only for a few hours — with a flurry of positive tests that forced NFL teams into scramble mode. It seemed, if only briefly, that even the best laid plans to get an NFL season underway were going to be sunk by a virus that refuses to be tamed. That could still happen. There are those who think it’s likely that eventually ...