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 with a changing landscape to both the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference and the Colonial League over the couple years, we decided to roll the dice and try something a little more challenging.
Instead of having one poll for large schools and another one for small schools, we tried to incorporate ALL teams in the same listing, while also navigating through an “unbalanced” schedule (ie., many schools not getting the opportunity to play each other during the regular season).
To be honest, it would have been safer to just keep our tradition poll and our unbelievable track record in being very accurate in our prognostication abilities over the years (and no, I’m not being self serving as I don’t get a vote and all the credit goes to our local coaches, administrators and media members who participate each year!)
But not wanting to rest on our reputation we shook things up with a brand new way to evaluate local teams.
Our pollsters this fall gave their selections for who are the top 10 performing football teams. Each voter selected 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. 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.
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.
Something else most other media outlets will NOT do: each year we also go back and evaluate how we did and tell you what worked and what didn’t.
So without any further delay, here’s a look at our preseason poll, followed by a look at how our FINAL poll shook out….(the number in parenthesis is the average points received for each team, with ‘10’ being the maximum.)
Preseason Poll
- Parkland (9.6)
- Nazareth (7.6)
- Freedom (7.2)
- Emmaus (6.2)
- Northampton (5.4)
- Northwestern (4.8)
- Becahi (3.2)
- Notre Dame-Green Pond (2.8)
- Central Catholic (1.4)
- Whitehall (.06)
Other teams receiving more than one mention: Southern Lehigh, Liberty.
Final Poll
- Parkland (10)
- Emmaus (8.8)
- (Tie) Easton / Northwestern (7.2)
- N/A
- Freedom (6.8)
- Nazareth (4.6)
- Southern Lehigh (3.2)
- East Stroudsburg South (3)
- Liberty (2.8)
- Whitehall (0.6)
Evaluation:
On the one hand, eight of the twelve teams mentioned in our preseason selections made it to the final polling results.
Our pollsters once again correctly identify the top team heading into the season, with Parkland capturing its second District 11 title in 3 years by beating Emmaus last week 17-3.
Freedom defeated Parkland week 2 and took over our number one spot for most of the year before losing to Easton week 9 and then lost to Parkland in the semi-final round of the playoffs.
Easton was the biggest “miss” on our part – and, in our defense, the expectations of most people cross the area. After totaling just three wins the last two years, not many people expected the Rovers to do much better than a .500 record. Their success was the biggest positive surprise of the fall of 2024. With a lot of big pieces back for next year, they will not fly under the radar heading into the 2025 season
East Stroudsburg South entered our poll two-thirds of the way through the regular season and solidified their spot in the top 10 with its second win over the defending champions from Whitehall, to win the District XI 5A title.
Two schools – Northampton and Central Catholic – were featured in our preseason poll but lost traction with a series of losses midway through the year and never bounced back (both made the playoffs but lost in the first round). Notre Dame-Green Pond received votes in our preseason poll and was ranked as high as 7th at one point but suffered from a first round exit from the playoffs after getting upset by North Schuylkill.
Bethlehem Catholic also started well, winning four of their first five games but went 0-5 in Northampton Division play in the second half of the regular season and never returned into our “Top 10”.
As always, we listen to and appreciate your feedback. Did you like our “new look” poll? Should we go back to the previous way we ranked local football teams? Or should we go back to the drawing board and come up with something different for 2025?
Email your thoughts about our poll, local sports blogs or our fall sports coverage in general to Chris.Michael@astound.com
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.
