At the top of George Miskinis' Christmas list this year might just be a lifetime supply of Elmer's glue.
The Mifflin County football coach has to be flabbergasted that the season ended Friday night when the Huskies could just as easily be 7-3 instead of 4-6. Most painful is the fact that turnovers were the root cause of most of the Huskies' woes.
Mifflin County led its opener against DuBois, the eventual top seed in the Districts 6-9 bracket, at the half, but a couple of untimely giveaways delivered a win to the Beavers. State College got all of its points in a close victory because the Huskies handed over the ball.
Even the finale, a must-win against Chambersburg, saw several key turnovers that may have changed the outcome.
That one negative statistic stole from the overall success of Mifflin County this year, which remains worth noting.
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Despite a relatively successful first year in the Mid-Penn for some Mifflin County teams, and a difficult season that was pretty much expected for most of the other fall sports, talk persists that the larger schools in District 6 - along with one each from Districts 4 and 9 - should form a new conference.
Call it the "we're too big to be in a rural area" league.
At a soccer playoff site last week, a Williamsport athletic administrator - whose school is one of the mentioned candidates for such a conference - confirmed in a roundabout way that the idea had been discussed. But, the problem is a little bit west of all the other schools involved - unless Altoona and Hollidaysburg withdraw from the WPIAL, there will be no new league.
Along with those mentioned, the others considered candidates for such a jointure are Central Mountain, State College and DuBois - which makes only six teams, barely enough for a league. And only five of those are in Class AAAA - Holidaysburg is a Class AAA school.
Erie's McDowell High School also is stranded - the only Class AAAA in District 10 - but would hardly be viable from an economic standpoint. McDowell and Williamsport are nearly 250 miles apart.
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Although the players came off the field after a huge - and for one of them, record-setting - outing Friday night, Juniata's football season didn't actually come to a close until Saturday, and the Indians had no say about it at that point.
As with the Huskies, the season outcome could be better - and the season longer - if a couple of close games had gone the other way. Most notable among those was Tri-Valley, in which a 26-0 Juniata lead evaporated after the first quarter.
But the real culprit in Juniata's failure to make the playoffs in football this year may well be the Tri-Valley League. Six of the 10 TVL football schools are Class A, so the Indians have little opportunity to pick up bonus points when they win.
Juniata's only larger (Class AAA) opponent was East Juniata, a Class A school that is triple-A by virtue of a cooperative agreement - but with a 1-9 record, the Tigers didn't really offer much help to their cross-county rivals.
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It's hard to say whether a cooperative of the two Juniata County schools - with or without Midd-West - would have been a playoff team this fall, but one thing's for sure: The folks at East Juniata won't give up their team without a fight.
The boosters there - who represent both East Juniata and Midd-West - are fighting to keep a separate program funded in order to provide opportunity for more players to see more field time.
Midd-West is unlikely to make the investment required to start its own football program, and it's questionable whether another nearby school would be open to a co-op with the Mustangs.
If they do go together someday - two schools or three - this one would be wise to be an East Juniata team. That would open the door for all three schools to participate, and would put the combined team in a Class AAA bracket that belongs to just one district instead of four.
Although at least a big Juniata co-op would have given District 6 a chance to have a football team in its own playoffs - the Districts 5-6-8-9 subregional shut out District 6 this year.
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Jeff Fishbein is sports editor of The Sentinel. Contact him at jfishbein@lewistownsentinel.com.
