We have three great local football match-ups on tap for today.
The rain may have postponed the Bloomsburg High School Panthers’ game versus Hughesville yesterday, but it gives us all a second chance to get to Hughesville and support the Panthers tonight. The game is at Hughesville Junior/Senior High School at 7:00 PM. Also, you should definitely take a few minutes and read about quarterback Blake Rankin and the Panthers overcoming the adversity of the flood in this great Reading Eagle article.
The disastrous flood which moved foundations and canceled the traditional Bloomsburg Fair, hasn’t derailed a Panthers squad which has stuck together like a family and suffered just their first loss of the season Friday night to Southern Columbia. That’s a miracle of sorts for a team that was displaced from their practice facility at Bloomsburg High School, losing most of its equipment and its field house. The Baltimore Ravens and New York Jets as well as area high schools have made donations to the Bloomsburg football program. The Jets donated 300 boxes of cleats. “Very difficult time for people in our area and we were very fortunate as a football team that only two kids were affected,” Rankin said. Underneath the mud and water that ravaged Bloomsburg is a Division-I bound quarterback. Earlier this year, Rankin gave a verbal commitment to play quarterback at Rutgers University.
At the college level, the number three Bloomsburg University Huskies will play the Shippensburg Red Raiders at 1 p.m., with pregame coverage starting at 12:45 p.m. If you can’t make it to Redman Stadium, watch the game via Bloomsburg University’s Live Streaming Channel.
Also, we have homecoming in Happy Valley today as the Penn State Nittany Lions take on the Purdue Boilermakers at 12:00 PM. If you aren’t in State College tailgating or can’t catch the game on the Big Ten Network, check out GoPSUsports.com or follow Onward State on Twitter for live tweets of the play-by-play action.
Photo Courtesy of Anderson Mancini
