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This week we start to take our first hard looks at the playoff situations for both local leagues and the District XI playoff picture.
For both the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference (South Division) and the Colonial League, any team that has more than one loss right now finds itself in a tough situation to try to make a run at capturing a crown.
For some (but not all) of the district classifications, however, with the expanded playoff format, there are quite a few teams that have struggled this year, yet still have a very good chance at seeing some post-season action.
On this Thursday’s “SportsTalk” on RCN-TV, Sports Director Gary Laubach will join us as we take a look back at the recent weeks-worth of games and look ahead to a full slate of games this weekend, plus delve into the potential playoff implications these contest may have.
As you have been seeing on our program, we’ve been featuring a number of new coaches and up-and-coming student-athletes like Ramie Moussa, Damien Garcia, and others, in both the Colonial League and the EPC all year long. That trend continues this week as we provide a game recap of last Saturday’s battle of Colonial football teams (one of them was in our pre-season poll to keep an eye on this fall), which ended in dramatic fashion. We also have game highlights and interviews as two of the top girls soccer teams in the league (Salisbury, currently 3rd in the Colonial League, and Southern Lehigh, currently first) squared off against each other.
Also on this week’s show, we will have a feature on one of the prominent high school programs in the Washington DC area–the Woodrow Wilson football team, as produced by our friends from DKN Sports at the Office of Community Television.
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Time for a look at our high school football “big” and “small schools” polls (as voted by select media members, coaches & administrators within the RCN-TV viewing area) and our “Pick 4” game predictions for games that will be played this weekend.
“Big” Schools Poll
1) Nazareth
2) Freedom
3) Easton
4) Parkland
5) Northampton
“Small” Schools Poll
3) Northwestern
4-tie) Saucon Valley/Notre Dame
Other schools receiving votes: Northern Lehigh
Our poll remains with the standard format that we have utilized for many seasons. For the largest school districts within the District XI/RCN-TV footprint, they qualify as the “big schools” in our pigskin poll. These schools consist of: Parkland, Liberty, Allen, Easton, Emmaus, Liberty, Dieruff, Freedom, Stroudsburg, Pleasant Valley, Northampton, Nazareth, Whitehall, Southern Lehigh, East Stroudsburg-South, and Pocono Mountain East & West.
“Small schools” for our poll consist of schools from Bangor, Saucon Valley, Central Catholic, Bethlehem Catholic, Northwestern, Wilson, Palisades, Palmerton, Salisbury, Notre Dame, Pen Argyl, Northern Lehigh and Catasauqua.
Check back each week here at “The Shop” to see if your favorite teams make our list!
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Now, here are our RCN football experts (along with myself) weighing in on four of the most competitive high school games this weekend…
| The “PICK 4” | Easton @ Bethlehem Catholic |
Liberty @ Central Catholic |
Salisbury @ Bangor |
Saucon Valley @ Northwestern |
| Gary Laubach | Easton | Central Catholic | Salisbury | Northwestern |
| Tony Cocca | Easton | Central Catholic | Salisbury | Northwestern |
| Keith Groller | Becahi | Central Catholic | Salisbury | Northwestern |
| John Leone | Easton | Liberty | Salisbury | Northwestern |
| Chris Michael | Becahi | Central Catholic | Salisbury | Northwestern |
You have the chance to vote right here on our website on who you think will win the Easton/Becahi game, plus other Eastern Pennsylvania Conference games we’ll have on RCN this weekend: Allen vs. Northampton and Emmaus vs. Freedom.
Keep following along each week here at “The Shop” for our predictions ahead of the weekend’s high school action and tune-in to our “RCN SportsTalk” television show for the latest “standings” to see which of our local football personalities are most correctly predicting the high school games this fall.
