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First, with the exception of a couple Colonial League games, there weren’t very many tight contests this past weekend for high school football. However, that didn’t mean there weren’t a few noteworthy performances from around the area.
Salisbury had its second straight impressive showing with a decided win over Pen Argyl and moved up a spot in our poll. Southern Lehigh fell out of our “Colonial League 5” with a thrilling one point loss to Saucon Valley, a team that was ranked fifth in our preseason poll. The top three teams continued their winning ways as Notre Dame, Northwestern and Palisades notched wins with multiple touchdown-margins of victories.
In the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference, the weekend unfolded pretty much as I had anticipated. Only the statewide pollsters (a group that I’ve been saying for over a decade is really a complete waste of effort, especially until you get closer to state playoff action) seemed surprised that Easton lost by multiple touchdowns to Freedom on Saturday in a game you saw on RCN TV. The statewide poll had Easton ranked fourth in the state while Freedom didn’t even get mentioned. Just for the record, we had Freedom ranked ahead of Easton in our preseason poll.
Our other RCN game last weekend had Bethlehem Catholic continuing its dominance over its crosstown rivals at Liberty. In other action, Parkland easily shook off any apparent rust it had by posted an impressive win over Whitehall in their first game played of the season.
That brings us to this week’s input from the RCN SportsTalk pollsters — a random collection of local coaches, athletic directors and media members. We never announce nor release the names of our non-media voters to get their honest opinions on the local football landscape while avoiding any thoughts of retribution or potential “bulletin board” material. Our “media voters” usually reveal themselves when we have the pleasure of having them on our weekly SportsTalk program, seen on Thursday nights on RCN TV and available through RCN on Demand.
(By the way, one of our pollsters has been saying that Nazareth is very underrated–this person will be crowing in a few weeks on the show if the Blue Eagles score a win this weekend over the Patriots.)
This year, instead of having a big school and small school poll as in seasons past, we are going to break the two polls down into EPC and Colonial League schools, within the RCN broadcast area. With the reduced schedules, this change for our poll will make things a bit more interesting since many of the top teams within the local conferences will not have the opportunity to actually face each other this fall.
Without the crowning of an official Colonial League and EPC champion, our poll will be an intriguing barometer to who in fact is the best team in each conference (and, of course, bragging rights through the winter months).
So below we have our first week of high school polls for both leagues, along with the listing of all of the teams that are included in our respective categories.
Feel free to email me at Chris.Michael@rcn.net for your thoughts on this week’s poll and we might read and respond to your emails on this week’s SportsTalk show.
EPC-LV TOP 5
1) Freedom
2) Parkland
3) Emmaus
4) Nazareth
5) Easton
Eligible Teams (in no particular order):
Allentown Central Catholic, Bethlehem Catholic, Easton, Freedom, Liberty, Dieruff, Allen, Parkland, Whitehall, Emmaus, Nazareth, and Northampton
COLONIAL TOP 5
2) Northwestern
3) Palisades
4) Salisbury
5) Saucon Valley
Eligible Teams (in no particular order):
Bangor, Pen Argyl, Notre Dame – Green Pond, Wilson, Catasauqua, Salisbury, Saucon Valley, Northwestern, Northern Lehigh, Southern Lehigh and Palisades
Be sure to bookmark our high school football broadcast schedule here on the website and check it frequently as, with several games already postponed or canceled so far, there could be changes from day to day.
On this week’s “SportsTalk”…
Our guests will be Allentown’s Dieruff High School new Boys Basketball Head Coach Marlon Randall and Athletic Director Dave Stout. They’ll talk about the struggles that inner-city schools are going through and issues they are facing during the pandemic. Coach Randall has been active in local communities in Eastern Pennsylvania and will discuss why it’s important to have more African-American leaders in the community and ways that he and other coaches have been serving as positive role models for today’s student-athletes.
Feel free to email me at Chris.Michael@rcn.net for your thoughts on this week’s poll and we might read and respond to your emails on this week’s Sports Talk show.
