Thursday, August 29, 2013

Are you ready for some football?

Perkiomen Valley's Rasaan Stewart.


By Darryl Grumling
dgrumling@pottsmerc.com

Back in the heyday of D-Generation X in the WWE, Triple H would fire up the crowd by exhorting, "Are ... You ... Ready?"

That is the general consensus in The Mercury sports department over the past few days as Friday's opening night of the scholastic football season rapidly approaches.

Nine area teams will be in action Friday, and two more begin their seasons Saturday.

It's a pigskin feast that should satiate even the most hungry fan.

Over the course of the season, we'll have scholastic football packages each Tuesday and Friday, with plenty of game coverage from Friday's and Saturday's weekly action.

For area season preview content, visit: www.gametimepa.com. And don't forget to pick up Friday's print edition of The Mercury to get ready for Week 1.

Click here for the link to PA Gametime

Follow Darryl Grumling on Twitter at @MercSmokinD.

Thursday, April 11, 2013

And the winner is ...

Boyertown's @misbehavndehavn defeated Pottstown's @PresidentReag in the final of the Smokin' D March Madness Twitter Tournament.

Like fellow No. 1 seed Louisville, which defeated Michigan 82-76 to win the NCAA men's basketball title Monday night, Boyertown's @misbehavndehavn turned back all challenges to win the @MercSmokinD March Madness Twitter Tournament.

Pottstown's @PresidentReag made it to the final, while Spring-Ford's @takeACHILLYpill and Perkiomen Valley's @ToastedCinnaBON rounded out the Final Four.


Friday, April 5, 2013

The Final Four

The MercSmokinD March Madness twitter tourney is down to the Final Four.


Boyertown's @misbehavndehavn was the only top seed to advance to the Final Four. @ToastedCinnaBon is still alive, carrying the PV banner. Pottstown's @PresidentReag is making a Wichita State-type run, taking out top seed @what_thekell of Methacton in an Elite Eight shocker. Spring-Ford's @takeACHILLYpill rounds out the semifinalists.


Friday, March 29, 2013

BASEBALL: Bears well-stocked in arms race

A.J. Bogucki

Dan Woodley

Tyler Bauman
By Darryl Grumling
dgrumling@pottsmerc.com
Twitter: @MercSmokinD

If you believe the old adage that baseball is "90 percent pitching," Boyertown figures to be a handful in the Pioneer Athletic Conference this spring.
Veteran Bears coach Todd Moyer has a well-stocked mound arsenal that should make the defending PAC-10 champs the team to beat.
For starters, there's University of North Carolina-bound ace right-hander A.J. Bogucki - last year's All-Area Player of the Year. The 6-foot-3, 200-pound Bogucki, who went 6-1 with a 2.94 ERA and 74 strikeouts in 52.3 innings, is No. 68 on the MaxPreps.com Top 100 high school baseball senior rankings for this year and is the top-ranked scholastic player in Pennsylvania by prepbaseballreport.com.
But the Bears' mound corps goes well beyond their top gun.
Senior left-hander Dan Woodley would be a No. 1 on virtually any other team in the state. Woodley, who is headed to East Stroudsburg, went 5-3 with a 1.98 ERA and 51 strikeouts over 35.1 innings last year.
If that's not enough, lefties Tyler Bauman and Brandon Griesemer and righties Mitch Renninger and Luke Stong provide all kinds of situational options for Moyer.
Bauman, who tossed two innings of two-strikeout, one-hit shutout relief to get the save in Wednesday's league-opening 3-2 win over Perkiomen Valley could be the sleeper on a staff that will be tough to solve should the Bears' lineup figure out a way to score some runs.

For Dennis Weller's area baseball preview capsules, click here




Tuesday, March 26, 2013

The Sweet 16

By Darryl Grumling
dgrumling@pottsmerc.com
Twitter: @MercSmokinD

The field for the first (and likely last) Smokin' D March Madness Mercury-area athletes Twitter tourney has been pared from 64 to 16.

The Smokin' D March Madness Mercury-area athletes Twitter tourney is down to the final 16.

The Hertzog regional appropriately has a couple of soccer players left in the Pottsgrove duo of @ThE_BiZzLE_ and @MollyOllyOxnfry, but top seed @misbehavndehavn of Boyertown will be tough to take down.

In the RoFo regional, top seed @putitDAOnOnme advanced with a hard-fought second-round win over PJP teammate @offthe_WALLS. The PV football duo of @ToastedCinnaBON and @allofDLIGHTs is still in the hunt, along with Spring-Ford's @HottieGulati.

Top seed @what_thekell is tearing through the Grumling regional, which will see a baseball-themed Sweet 16 matchup between Pottstown's @PresidentReag and Phoenixville's @hit_N_it_YOGI.

The Seeley regional, not surprisingly, is chock-full of Spring-Ford hopefuls, highlighted by a much-anticipated battle between siblings @insertCOYNEhere and @COYNErback11. In earlier action, OJR's @smh_at_smh was left shaking her head after a tough second-round loss to Spring-Ford's @YouCant_Zme, and Spring-Ford's@takeACHILLYpill edged Pottsgrove's @Riled_Up13 to complete an all-Rams remaining bracket.

Thursday, March 21, 2013

A real winner

Spring-Ford's Sammi Haas, shown here holding the District 1-AAAA championship trophy, has had a big hand in the 50-3 combined record of the Rams' basketball and field hockey teams thus far as a senior.

By Darryl Grumling
dgrumling@pottsmerc.com
Twitter: @MercSmokinD

Charlie Sheen likes to talk about Winning, but the haywire Hollywood star doesn't have anything on Spring-Ford's Sammi Haas.
Haas, a 5-foot-7 senior guard, has been a starter all season for the Pioneer Athletic Conference and District 1 champion Rams (31-2), who face District 3 No. 5 seed Cumberland Valley (26-6) for the PIAA Class AAAA girls basketball championship Friday night at 6 p.m. at Hershey's Giant Center.
Back in the fall, Haas also started for the Rams' PAC-10 championship field hockey team, which won its first 19 games before falling in its district tournament opener.
That adds up to a 50-3 overall mark (94.3 percent) for teams Haas has been on this year.
That's some serious winning.
For The Mercury's state championship preview package, click on the links below:

Spring-Ford seeks golden culmination

Spring-Ford vs. Cumberland Valley breakdown

Spring-Ford's Stipa a star generations in the making