November 1, 2019 Upper Dublin Cardinals at West Chester Rustin Golden Knights Football Game (plus the final score from WC Rustin at WC East on Nov. 8)

Announcement: I wasn't at the game last night, so I won't have any photos. According to maxpreps, however, West Chester Rustin's football team beat West Chester East by a score of 14-7 on November 8. This means that Rustin will advance to the semi-finals in the PIAA District #1, Class 5A playoffs. If I'm reading the scores and brackets right, that game will be played on November 15 at Academy Park, somewhere not too far from the Philadelphia Air Port (PHL). Congratulations to the Golden Knights for their underdog win!

Update: The brackets have been filled out. In one game next week will be #1 seeded Cheltenham against #4 seeded Kennet. In the other game will be #3 seeded Academy Park vs. #7 seeded Rustin. It should be noted, though, that Rustin played Academy Park in last year's playoffs, and won the game, 42-6. A lot can change in a year, but I'd say that the seeding might not be the whole story.

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Post Summary: On November 1, the Cardinals from Upper Dublin High School came to West Chester Rustin High School for round #1 of the PIAA District 1, class AAAAA playoffs. Rustin took the game by a score of 23-0 and advanced to the quarter-finals. This post contains a photo-essay of the game.

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Original photo taken by @remlaps

Going into the first playoff game of the year, on paper it looked like Rustin probably had the edge over Upper Dublin. Rustin had the better record, and was seeded higher in the single elimination tournament brackets. However, this fan was nervous because the last time the two teams saw each other - in 2018 - Upper Dublin walked away with the victory. Fortunately, this year things turned out differently, and Rustin ended the evening with another (W) on their record.

Overall, the night returned to a normal sort of schedule for the marching band. Rustin's band played the pre-game show, and Upper Dublin's band played the halftime show, in between the 2nd and 3rd quaters. Interestingly, Upper Dublin's band came to the Rustin bleachers during the pregame show to watch the band performance, and I overheard some of their band kids saying that one of the band staff at Upper Dublin is a Rustin graduate.

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Here is the box score

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Team	Location	Name	Q1	Q2	1st Half	Q3	Q4	2nd Half	Final
Upper Dublin	Visitor	Cardinals	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Rustin	Home	Golden Knights	7	7	14	0	9	9	23

The remainder of this post will contain a photo-essay from the game. If you're viewing this in steempeak.com, you can click on photos to make them larger. On other platforms, you might have to open them in new tabs.

Unless otherwise noted, all images are original photos that were taken by @remlaps.

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Marching Band

Rustin - Pregame

Rustin's show this year was called, "Descent into madness," and it featured Green Day's Basket Case, Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, and Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. This performance, and another the next day at a band competition in Allentown, may have been the last show performances for the season, since any remaining football games are likely to be away games.

Rustin finally played a pregame show, but now it's getting dark so early that I had the usual difficulties with darkness and auto-focus during their show. I did manage to get some photos that came out ok, though.

Upper Dublin - Half time

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Football

As with the previous two posts, I'm so far behind that I'm forgetting details from the game already. Rustin scored a touch down in each of the first two quarters, and also in the fourth. Upper Dublin had one good scoring opportunity, deep in Rustin's "red zone" - maybe in the 3rd quarter - but Rustin's defense held and forced a turnover on downs. One thing that puzzled me is that Upper Dublin appeared to take an intentional safety late in the fourth quarter. In the grand scheme of things, it didn't effect the outcome much, but I was curious about why they did that.

As always, Rustin's strongest offense was on the ground, and #8 and #21 both did a nice job moving the ball, but we also saw good ball movement from #1, #25, and #42, and even #4 - the quarterback had some yards.

Rustin players are in the blue & gold uniforms.

^^^ If I'm not mistaken, this is the touchdown that made it 14-0. ^^^

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Cheerleading

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Marching Bands in the Stands

Upper Dublin

Rustin

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After last year's loss to Upper Dublin, it was good to see Rustin win this year's game. Going into the playoffs, Rustin was ranked #2,891 in the nation, 87 in the state, and 21 in class AAAAA. And after the Upper Dublin game on November 1, those ranks improved to #2,358 in the nation, #77 in the state, and #17 in Class 5A. Ranks on maxpreps should update again on Sunday and Thursday to reflect the results from this week-end's games. Considering that WC East was ranked #27 in the state going into Friday night's games, it may be interesting to see the changes.

As noted above, this was probably the last week-end for the marching band to perform their show for this season, so congratulations to the marching band for a fantastic season. They'll still be out playing pep music in the stands for the remaining one or two playoff games, and they're also marching in two more parades: the Veteran's Day parade tomorrow at 2pm, and the QVC/West Chester "Old Fashioned Christmas Parade" on the evening of December 6, probably at 7pm, but it gets crowded so arrive early! Both parades will be located in downtown West Chester.

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The @rgkmb-unofficial account is an experimental account that is operated by Steve Palmer (@remlaps). The account's purpose is to demonstrate the viability of a fund-raising model that is based on use of the Steem block chain in the community. For more information, see our introductory post: Introducing Steem to the Rustin Golden Knights Marching Band

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Thank you for your time and attention.

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Posted by Steve Palmer (@remlaps)