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Here are three local sports observations before we take a look at this week’s high school basketball polls…
1) District 11 announced its schedule and sites for its upcoming postseason events for its individual wrestling tournaments coming up for the 2A and 3A classifications:
Regional Wrestling Tournaments (Feb. 27):
AA – Central Dauphin East HS
AAA – The Charles Chrin Community Center of Palmer Township
East Super Regional Wrestling Tournaments (March 6):
AA – Pottsville Area HS
AAA – Quakertown HS
The state tournament will once again be held at the Hershey Arena. In addition to this week’s regionals, last week’s 2A district championships were held at a unique location – the Charles Chrin Community Center. It certainly has been a strange winter sports season!
2) Before the basketball playoffs get underway later this week, we discussed many of the teams in the Lehigh Valley on the latest “SportsTalk” show.
Here’s a sample…
VIDEO: Keith’s Take on Top Lehigh Valley Teams
See the entire discussion this Thursday at 7pm and 9pm on RCN-TV to hear more from on the local hoops scene!
3) Justin Paz gave one of the top performances by a point guard a few years ago at Bethlehem Catholic and is now having success at the next level at East Stroudsburg University. However, there’s another rising guard with the Golden Hawks, Edixson Gomez, who reminds me a lot of Paz in his junior year. Gomez sports an explosive first step, great court vision and is developing into an excellent passer. In a year where there’s a ton of outstanding guard play, keep an eye on Gomez for the remainder of this year and as one of the top returning guards for 2022.
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It’s time to look at our scholastic basketball polls involving the District XI teams in our viewing area heading into this week’s action.
For this winter, we are breaking the two polls down into the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference (Lehigh Valley teams only) and Colonial League schools, within the RCN broadcast area. With the reduced schedules and many of our teams staying mostly “in country” with their opponents this year due to the COVID-19 restrictions, this plan for our polls will keep things interesting since many of the top teams within the local conferences will not have the opportunity to actually face each other this fall.
With no eastern Pennsylvania conference playoffs this winter, our polls 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 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) Easton
3) Northampton
4) Parkland
Eligible Teams (in no particular order):
Central Catholic, Bethlehem Catholic, Easton, Freedom, Liberty, Dieruff, Allen, Parkland, Whitehall, Emmaus, Nazareth, and Northampton
COLONIAL TOP 5
1) Northwestern
2) Notre Dame
3) Bangor
4) Palmerton
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 winter sports broadcast schedule here on the website and check it frequently. With several games already postponed or canceled so far this season, there could be changes from day to day!
