Westmoreland high school basketball notebook: Latrobe boys head to charity tournament

By: HSSN Staff
Thursday, December 27, 2018 | 5:54 PM

Reed Fenton and Bryce Butler are used to traveling up and down the East Coast for AAU basketball tournaments, but the senior standouts joined their Latrobe teammates for a road trip north this week.

The Wildcats are in Elmira, N.Y. for the three-day Josh Palmer Fund Elmira Holiday Inn Classic.

Twenty-four teams will play 32 games Friday through Sunday at Elmira High School and Ernie Davis Academy.

Latrobe is playing in the national bracket, the top division, with New York teams Elmira, Horseheads, St. Stephen’s, Binghamton Seton Catholic Central, Mount Michael Academy and Archbishop Molloy as well as St. Agnes (Va.) and Archbishop Hoban (Ohio).

The Wildcats open at 4:15 p.m. Friday against Binghamton Seton Catholic Central.

“The competition is going to be really good, and the atmosphere should be good, too, but different,” Butler said. “Going into the tournament we don’t really know what we are going up against, so we’ll just have to play our best going in blind. I think it’ll be a good challenge for our young guys to see what they are made of.”

Latrobe had planned to play in the long-running tournament several years ago but could not get schedules lined up so far in advance.

The Josh Palmer Fund has raised over $1 million since it was formed in 1999. Palmer was attending Mansfield University when he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease. Funds raised this weekend go to Arnot Health, CareFirst and Guthrie medical facilities to help cover health-care expenses for those battling the same disease.

Section play resumes

The holiday break will merge into section play next week as team redirect their attention to the WPIAL standings for 2019.

Next Friday, the big boys game in Section 3-6A has Penn-Trafford hosting Latrobe in a matchup of teams that left the state for recent tournaments. The best girls game that night has No. 4 Norwin visiting No. 1 North Allegheny in a Section 1-6A clash.

Penn-Trafford, meantime, hosts No. 3 Oakland Catholic in a Section 3-5A game.

Bill Beckner is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Bill at bbeckner@tribweb.com or via Twitter @BillBeckner.

Tags: Franklin Regional, Greensburg C.C., Latrobe, Norwin, Penn-Trafford