Football starts

Been up on the hill the past two days watching the Crimson Tide.

They have about 35 players out, but also have about five or six freshman working out.

Columbia scrimmages Ephrata on Saturday at 10 a.m.

It's the first time the Tide and Mounts have gotten together in football since the 1970s. They have a new coach and went 2-8 last season under the Ephrata legend Kenny Grove.

Former Cocalico coach Phil Kauffman said the Mounts have nothing back, but they do have some big linemen.

Council talks trash

Until a few weeks ago, local trash haulers such as River Valley, Johnson and Gamby’s helped Columbia by emptying trash receptacles in the downtown area and the borough parks.
No more. That job belongs to Waste Management of York. The move to take the trash business out of town has angered not only haulers, but members of borough council as well.
The trash collection was a topic of discussion at Monday’s borough council meeting, with council admitting it knew nothing about the change.
“We were doing trash cans and we gave the borough a reduced rate,” said Ted Johnson of Johnson’s Disposal.
Johnson said only one of the local haulers, River Valley Disposal, was notified of having to bid for the services.
Borough Manager Norm Meiskey explained that information to trash haulers was sent out by using the yellow pages of the telephone book and if the local haulers weren’t listed, they didn’t get the information. The borough manager acknowledged that Johnson wasn’t on the list, but wouldn’t have been chosen because of problems with his trash collection.
Bob Kline of River Valley, also objected to the borough’s method.
“Why go to the phone book, when there’s a list of licensed haulers?” Kline asked the council.
Meiskey said that no such list existed. He also said that letters were sent out and those who didn’t want to bid on the services, just didn’t. The borough manager also said that Gamby’s Disposal didn’t want to bid on the trash collection.
So after going through the process, because the cost was under $10,000, which would have forced the borough to seek bids, not quotes for the trash service, Waste Management was awarded the service.
Kline provided some details on Waste Management’s plan, saying that the York company’s bid was for 12 cans and after going around and counting the cans, his was for 24, plus six in parks.
“Had I bid the same package as Waste Management, I would have saved the borough $762,” Kline said.
Before council had a chance to address the issue, a few citizens spoke.
Those who spoke didn’t like the fact the service was taken out of the hands of the local haulers, considering they volunteered their time for events such as the Spring Clean-Up in April.
“Waste Management won’t volunteer in April because they don’t care about this town,” said Shirley McBride.
John Neidig wanted to know if council voted on the change.
“Was this voted on and passed by the council in an open forum?: Neidig asked.
“It was handled by the borough manager,” said Council President Sandy Duncan. “We are reviewing it.”
“This is cowboy stuff,” Neidig said.
Meiskey said that if there is an error, the borough will investigate it and correct the error.
“Waste Management had the lowest quote and we must go with whoever quotes the lowest,” Meiskey said.
Said Councilman Vern Detz, “this is on the top of my list to find out what happened.”
“I was taken back by this decision, because we just found out when it became public knowledge,” Detz said.
“This will not be a dead issue with this borough council and will be acted upon. There will be a resolution to this,” Detz said.
“Council was not aware of this decision, relieving local haulers,” said Councilwoman Mary Barninger.
“I am troubled by this determination,” she said.
“We must do what we can to promote local businesses and we have to support

Police charge 2

Two people were charged in separate incidents and placed in Lancaster County Prison following weekend disputes in Columbia.
Both incidents happened on Manor Street, police said.
In the first incident, police were dispatched to the 500 block of Manor Street at 3:14 a.m., Saturday, Aug. 9, because of repeated calls of a male walking in the area, causing damage to cars and property.
When police arrived on the scene, they found David Guzman, 18, of 15 East Walnut St., damaging a car in the 700 block of Plane Street. When approached by police, Guzman failed to comply with several verbal commands and a taser was used.
Police said Guzman damaged eight vehicles, with damage ranging from broken windows to body damage. Also, one window was broken with a bench and another had a traffic cone thrown through a window.
Off. Brent Keyser charged Guzman with nine counts of criminal mischief, as well as one count each of disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, public drunkenness and underage drinking.
He was arraigned before District Magistrate Jayne Duncan and committed to prison.
About two hours later at 5:13 a.m., police were dispatched to the Fourth and Manor street area for a report of a female standing outside armed with a hand gun. While en route, police were told at least one shot was fired.
Upon arrival, police found between three and five people standing outside at 404 Manor St. and were able to determine that the female who fired the shot entered the home and was still armed, and did fire a shot at another person, who was not hurt.
After securing the area, police were able to talk Alicia Loreto, 28, of 404 Manor St. out of the residence after five minutes.
A nine millimeter handgun, along with nine live rounds of shells were found inside.
Off. Matt Leddy charged Loreto with one count of aggravated assault, simple assault, recklessly endangering another person and disorderly conduct.
Loreto was arraigned before Duncan and also placed in Lancaster County Prison.

Off-season is keeping up

sports started on Monday, it marked the end of summer for the student-athletes or did it.
To stay competitive in high school sports today, teams have to keep up with the Jones, by participating in team camps, 7-on-7 workouts and weight lifting.
Plus, they have to balance other sports and allow time for their athletes to enjoy their time off.
“I think it has become the nature of the beast,” said Donegal coach Bill Groff.
“Everyone is doing the off-season stuff now. Every sport wants a piece of the kids, so you are trying to find the balance,” Groff said.
“I think the off-season has changed big time,” said L-S coach John Manion.
However at L-S, they don’t go overboard with the off-season workouts.
“We don’t believe in forcing the kids to do things in the off-season,” Manion said.
Over the summer, L-S works out up to 10 hours a week.
“We’ll go to a 7-on-7 here and thee. It’s good work, but until you are in pads you really don’t get anything out of it,” the L-S coach said.
“It hasn’t hurt us so far,” Manion said.
For football players at Columbia, it was a busy off-season. They participated in 7-on-7 drills at Penn State, Manheim, Hempfield and a few others.
“For us it’s not hard because we enjoy football,” said Brandon Felus, a starting lineman.
Assistant coach Dave Mowrer played high school football in the 1980s.
“Back then we didn’t do 7-on-7 because our kids played three different sports. Now, if you don’t focus all year round, then you get lost in the shuffle,” Mowrer said.
ELCO’s Mark Evans wants his players to enjoy the summer.
“”I think the thing we focus on is that they have got to have a summer to be kids,” Evans said.
“We focus on lifting and running. If they get together to throw, it is on their own,” Evans said.
“We as coaches have a tendency to overkill and that’s how you lose kids,” Evans said.
Another program with an active summer was Lancaster Catholic.
Coach Bruce Harbach said his team got together at least 430 times to throw.
“You have to because there is more going on and its needs when you have a wide open offense,” Harbach said.
Still, there’s caution as coaches don’t want to see their players show up hurt.
“You have to do it to keep up with the other teams because its the nature of the game now,” Harbach said.

Media Day

The Lancaster-Lebanon League held its annual Media Day for football Friday at Four Seasons.
I like Media Day for a couple of reasons. One, its a chance to get together with fellow writers and talk shop; two, its a chance to meet and greet the coaches of the league, and three, it saves work later in the season, when you need information about a certain team.
One stop shopping, if you understand what I mean.
I do wish other sports such as basketball and wrestling would host similar events.
Didn’t hear any questions about Brett Favre and we didn’t have a cranky 81-year-old coach not remembering a certain year or player.
It was fun.
So what were the topics?
• A former local high school coach coming out of retirement, returning as an assistant coach at another school and that program’s future.
• Former Cocalico coach Phil Kauffman, now the John Madden of Blue Ridge Cable, trying to find out info on the teams.
• A chance for the players to meet the media and talk about their seasons. Something many of them don’t get a chance to do during the season.
• A chance for all teams to say they have a shot at a section title.
• As I made the rounds of the teams in Section 3, one thing that interested me was the roster numbers ranging from the mid-20s for Pequea Valley to the high 60s for L-S and Lancaster Catholic.
With the exception of Columbia and Pequea Valley, most teams have more than 45 players on their roster. ELCO might be just above 40 as Mark Evans did not list any sophomores on his roster.
Come on coach, don’t take a page from the Joe PA playbook and how am I suppose to get a scouting report on your team!
• Last year was the Year of the Running Back in Section 3. This year, it might be the Year of the Quarterback. Catholic, Northern Lebanon and ELCO have veteran quarterbacks.
• Annville-Cleona after two years on the road, will finally play home games this year, under the lights, including a Thursday night pre-season tilt with Cocalico.
• The Game of the Year will be in week three when Catholic and Central hook up.
• Section Three, with a good mix of big (Class AAA) and small (Class AA and A) schools is the most competitive in the league.
However, with growing programs at Catholic and L-S, the smaller schools might not be able to compete, at least numbers-wise in a few years.
• Learned that Octorara is interested in coming into the league.
Might be a good fit for the Lancaster County teams in Section 3, but not for the Lebanon County schools such as Northern Lebanon.
That could be an overnight trip!
• As for the food, it was just hot dogs, soda and cookies. The kids were hitting the food table pretty good.