It’s been a wild last few weeks for high school football in the Lehigh Valley area. There have been some very competitive games, and contests with several teams beating up on each other. It’s made for some interesting playoff races as we head into the final two weeks of the regular season.
First, we take a look at some of the highlights of games RCN-TV has broadcast over the last few weeks.
Before we look at this week’s expert opinions on who the top teams are, 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.
Also, if you have a beef about our poll or want to talk about the District XI football season, the different playoff scenerios or any other scholastic football topic, tune in to “RCN SportsTalk” live, this Thursday from 7-8 pm. Our guests will include local official Joe Diorio and RCN Commentator John Breidinger, as we’ll also discuss football rules, interpretations and some controversial calls made recently.
With the particulars out of the way, here’s a look at how our next-to-last set of polls shake out.
Big Schools (11 pollsters)
- Parkland—55 points (11 first-place votes)
- Easton – 42
- Freedom – 35
- Liberty – 19
- Nazareth – 6
Other schools receiving votes: Emmaus, Stroudsburg, Whitehall
Small Schools (10 pollsters)
- Becahi – 45 points (6 first-place votes)
- Saucon Valley – 42 (4 first-place votes)
- Notre Dame-GP – 31
- Central Catholic – 20
- Northwestern — 10
Other schools receiving votes: Salisbury
There were some big changes in each poll.
Among the larger schools, Freedom’s first loss of the season to Parkland puts the Trojans back to the number one position and drops the Patriots back down to third. Easton’s clubbing of Liberty moves them back into the number two spot. Nazareth holds on to the final spot—barely—following its loss to Whitehall last Friday and is still very much alive in the district playoff race.
In the smaller schools, Bethlehem Catholic finally reclaims the top spot it had lost following their loss to Liberty the first week of the season. Saucon Valley (8-0) could reclaim the number one position with another solid showing against undefeated Notre Dame this Friday (on RCN-TV, tape-delayed at 10pm).
Next week here at the “Shop,” we’ll have our final installment of the “SportsTalk” football polls, along with more video highlights of local teams and players and a breakdown of playoff possibilities for local teams as they jockey for post-season positions.
Again, we welcome your comments and opinions on our poll and on high school football in general. Call our show live this Thursday or email us now (rcnsportstalk@rcn.com) and tune-in to hear it read and responded to during the program.
