Daily Times reporter saved Eric Futch from being the next Sydney Maree

World record miler Sydney Maree and I had a lot of facinating late night chats about his world views. 

I've been taking photos for a long time. This is one of my favorites.

I’ve often said that Chester has a love-hate relationship with the Daily Times. 

The love we have shows everyday as 19013 is always one of the top three zip code that buys the paper - and we prefer not to subscribe so we always pay top dollar for the paper we love.

The hate we have is due to the alleged bias in coverage of bad news versus good news out of Chester. I say alleged because it’s been proven more than a few times that the good news stories outnumber the bad, but human nature’s perception will always have bad outweighing good despite the numbers. 

Although this isn’t a Chester story, the folks at Penn Wood High School are similar to the folks at Chester High School in a couple ways. One, we always have a lot of black students. Two, we always have a few standout athletes.

I was 1700 miles away and I couldn’t help but to follow every word in Penn Wood track star Eric Futch’s suspension. 

This is a huge story and brings back bad memories of my college days when Villanova miler Sydney Maree was at the starting block at several races and snatched off the track right before the starting pistol because the United States was protesting everything to do with South Africa because of Apartheid. 

Of course, the irony was that Apartheid was a crime against black South Africans but Sidney being a black South African didn’t matter to the U.S. No exception was made on his behalf.

If there is ever a time to stop hating the Daily Times, it’s right now. 

If it wasn’t for the bold and honest reporting of Anthony J. Sanfilippo who shared what really happened leading up to the Eric Futch suspension, Eric Futch would be the 2012 version of Sydney Maree.

You can bet that Sanfilippo is not a well liked guy among the local PIAA decision makers around here because he shared what was probably assumed to be ‘good-old-boy’ chatter that, by nature, never leaves the room. 

Come on y’all. Send the Daily Times a note or phone call of thanks. Anthony Sanfilippo can surely use our much deserved support right now. 

Click HERE for the story that changed the game