The HS Football “Astounding 10” Debuts
For several years now, I thought that we at Astound TV Sports had generated the most comprehensive high school football poll in our District XI/ATVN coverage area.
Each season, we are blessed to have a rotating panel of very knowledgeable Lehigh Valley football coaches, athletic directors and media members to give their opinion and vote for the top teams in the area.
But this year, we’re upping our game a bit!
For this fall, we unveil the “Astounding 10’ high school football weekly poll!
Our pollsters this fall will be giving their selections for who are the top 10 performing football teams that you’ll see on the Astound TV Network this fall.
Each voter will select the top 10 teams – with each team getting 10 points for the top team, 9 for the second best team, 8 for third and so forth.
One caveat – in order to balance the bigger and smaller schools in the region, each pollster MUST include at least three teams that are NOT a 6A-sized school.
It’s a brand new way to gauge the top teams in Eastern Pennsylvania this fall, and we invite you to check back each week throughout this football season to see which teams make our poll…and who’s listed where, as decided by our diverse group of voters.
One other unique aspect to our poll…the coaches and athletic directors’ names are never revealed so they can vote with their minds…and also avoid any potential “bulletin board” material, so each one can make selections without repercussions.
Throughout the years that we have done our poll, the coaches and athletic directors have always maintained very objective opinions. If you look back through our archives, you’ll notice that our pollsters have been amazingly accurate and unbiased in their selections, and our polls’ top teams very often finish similarly in the same order as the “power points” system that District XI uses when compiling its standings and playoff positionings.
As far as which media members have a say? They will identify themselves on our Thursday “SportsTalk” show, which, this fall, will be streamed live on YouTube every Thursday at 7pm, in addition to being broadcast each week on ATVN.
So without any further delay, here’s the grand unveiling of the new “Astound 10” for our preseason poll….(the number in parenthesis is the average points received for each team, with ‘10’ being the maximum.)
- Parkland (9.6)
- Nazareth (7.8)
- Emmaus (6.8)
- Freedom (6.6)
- Northampton (5.4)
- Northwestern (4.8)
- Becahi (3.2)
- Whitehall (2.8)
- Central Catholic (1.6)
- Notre Dame-Green Pond (.8)
Other teams receiving more than one mention: Easton, So. Lehigh
Our preseason polls show that while Parkland received a heavy majority of first place votes, there’s a tight race among many of the teams behind Trojans and should make for some interesting races for this year’s District XI playoffs.
Bookmark and return to our page each week and check back after this weekend’s game to see if your favorite teams moved up or down in the minds of our pollsters!
The views expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Astound Broadband or any other agency, organization, employer or company.