High School Football: Week 12
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We’ve advanced to the second round of the high school football playoffs and, for Class 3A & 5A teams, we’ll see champions be crowned for the District XI playoffs.
“Playoff week two” also means that our weekly football polls will be coming to an end. So as we head into the 12th week of the football season overall, here’s a look at where our pigskin experts (a mix of local coaches, administrators and RCN and other media members) stack up the teams in our coverage area:
“Big” Schools Poll
1) Nazareth
2) Freedom
3) Parkland
3) Easton
4) Northampton
“Small” Schools Poll
1) Northwestern
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.
Here are the “rules” for our voters:
Each pollster identifies their top five teams among the “big schools” and the top four squads for the “smaller” group—the top school gets five (or four for the small schools) points, the second team gets four (or three) points and so on, with an average score determining the order of teams in both of the polls.
Check back each week here at “The Shop” to see if your favorite teams make our list!
Now, here are our RCN football experts (along with myself) weighing in on four of the biggest high school games this weekend…
| The “PICK 4” | Parkland vs. Freedom |
Central Cathoic vs. Northwestern |
Southern Lehigh vs. E. Stroudsburg South |
Lafayette vs. Holy Cross |
| Gary Laubach | Freedom | Central Catholic | Southern Lehigh | Lafayette |
| Tony Cocca | Parkland | Central Catholic | Southern Lehigh | Holy Cross |
| Keith Groller | Parkland | Central Catholic | Southern Lehigh | Holy Cross |
| John Leone | Parkland | Central Catholic | Southern Lehigh | Holy Cross |
| Chris Michael | Parkland | Central Catholic | Southern Lehigh | Holy Cross |
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. Also, be sure to check out the “fan voting” section of RCN-TV’s games each week here on our website to let your opinions be known as well!
