HS Football: Things To Watch

The views expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of RCN or any other agency, organization, employer or company. 

The RCN Sports staff members are busy preparing for another great season of high school football.

With “double sessions” in full swing, it’s time to take a look at some of the great storylines to follow for teams and schools within the RCN-TV viewing area.

NEW COACHES:

• There were seven coaching changes in the Lehigh Valley alone this off-season.  We’ve already featured most of them on our “SportsTalk” show (and are trying to schedule dates for those we have not as of yet had on), but I think all of the school districts with new hires have reason for optimism.
• Whitehall, Bangor and Central Catholic all have up-and-coming programs.  New head coaches typically need a few years to fully implement their system–both on the field and off–and the fact that all three of these teams have quite a bit of talent that will return beyond next year bodes well for the overall health of the programs.
• All three may not challenge for league honors in 2019, but keep an eye on the players who develop over the course of the fall to see which players might have “break out seasons”, which should help these schools be playoff contenders by 2020.

WILSON (DC) FOOTBALL:

• Our friends at “DKN Sports” in the Washington DC area recently produced a feature on the Wilson high school football program and their successes in recent seasons (a portion of their story will be featured on an upcoming edition of “RCN SportsTalk” to hear more about them.)
• While there will be a number of competitive teams in the DMV on the gridiron once again this fall, Wilson has a ton of talent returning for this year’s squad and should be posting some impressive wins in 2019.

PEN ARGYL/BANGOR’S “100th”:

• These two long-time rivals will be meeting for the 100th time this fall.  While the Bangor/Green Knights game sometimes gets overlooked by other key rivalry match-ups (Easton/P’burg, Northampton/Catasauqua and other traditional “Thanksgiving Day” games), expect this event to be much bigger than any previous meeting between these two schools.
• Both programs took some lumps last year but both head coaches have told me that their kids have been working hard and vow big improvements for the new season.
• We’ll be talking more about the 100th meeting between Bangor and Pen Argyl on one of our three “SportsTalk at the Allentown Fair” shows coming up in two weeks.  Keep checking back to the RCN-TV website for more details on these special programs that will be shot “on location.”

Next week, we’ll commence with our usual high school football polls and game predictions contest, which include RCN announcers, local media and coaches and administrators that will continue through the scholastic football season.