We’ve had a couple surprises through the first three weeks of the high school football season, yet many of our pre-season expectations remain firmly in place.
The biggest surprise of the District XI high school football season has to be the improved performances of the Nazareth Blue Eagles. While the football pundits thought Nazareth’s up-and-coming players might be a year away from contending, the Eagles have clearly established themselves as a team to watch this fall. Jahan Dotson, Travis Stefanik and company have played three outstanding games—all against strong opponents—and have won two of those contests. Several of those same Eagle athletes who surprised everyone during the basketball season during their tremendous run last winter are stepping up and making noise, pushing Nazareth forward and in to our football poll for the first time this season.
Saucon Valley holds on to their first-place ranking after jumping out to a 49-24 cushion on previously unbeaten Southern Lehigh in posting a victory last Friday night. Parkland also continued its winning ways by jumping out to a 28-0 lead on Central Catholic last weekend en route to a win and a 3-0 record. Both Saucon Valley’s and Parkland’s games last weekend are available to watch on RCN On-Demand.
Before we look at the complete list, here’s a quick recap of our poll structure. Our pollsters consist of many different people over the entire Lehigh Valley region. Our voting panel consists of local media members from different outlets, along with local coaches and athletic directors from across the entire district. The voters are not identified so they can give their honest impressions without any worry of outside pressures or “bulletin board” material, and we rotate different pollsters from different schools each year, including guests from our biggest to our smallest schools.
As in previous years, we take the 400-male enrollment number as the cutoff for schools within the District XI/RCN footprint. All schools above that number qualify as “big schools” in our poll. These schools consist of Parkland, Liberty, Allen, Easton, Emmaus, Liberty, Dieruff, Freedom, Stroudsburg, Pleasant Valley, Northampton, Nazareth, E. Stroudsburg-South, Whitehall, Southern Lehigh and Bangor. “Small schools” (below 400-male enrollment) consist of Saucon Valley, Central Catholic, Bethlehem Catholic, Northwestern, Wilson, Palisades, Palmerton, Salisbury, Notre Dame, Pen Argyl, Nolehi and Catasauqua. Each pollster will identify their top five teams in each group—the top school gets five points, the second team gets four points and so on, with an average score determining the order of teams in the poll.
With the particulars out of the way, here’s the full look at how this week’s polls shake out…
BIG SCHOOL FB Poll (10 pollsters)
1) Parkland – 50 total votes (10 -1st place votes)
2) Easton — 37
3) Freedom — 33
4) Nazareth — 17
5) Liberty — 9
Other schools receiving more than one vote: Whitehall
SMALL SCHOOLS FB Poll (10 pollsters)
1) Saucon Valley – 46 total votes (6 – 1st place votes)
2) Bethlehem Catholic – 43 (4 – 1st place vote)
3-tie) Central Catholic– 24
3-tie) Notre Dame — 24
5) Northern Lehigh — 9
Other schools receiving more than one vote: Northwestern, Palmerton
Here are clips of the highlights from all of our high school games broadcast on RCN-TV so far this season.
Feel free to email your opinions on our poll to RCNSportsTalk@rcn.com and join us this Thursday, live at 7pm, on RCN-TV. We might read your emails live on the air during this program. This week’s guests list includes Head Coach Matt Evancho and members of the Saucon Valley football team to talk about their success this fall and the Panther’s upcoming schedule.
Don’t forget to check back to the “SportsTalk Shop” throughout the fall for the latest results of our bi-weekly high school football poll.
