High school football season is now in full swing.
Following a bunch of interesting contests within the RCN viewing area this past weekend, it’s time to examine our “week two” edition of the District XI/RCN HS Football Bi-Weekly Poll.
First, a quick recap of our poll structure. Our pollsters consist of numerous people from throughout the entire Lehigh Valley region. Our voting panel consists of local media members from various outlets, along with local coaches and athletic directors from across the entire district. The voters are not identified so they can give their honest impressions without any worry of outside pressures or “bulletin board” material, and we rotate different pollsters from different schools each year, including guests from our biggest to our smallest schools.
As in previous years, we take the 400-male enrollment number as the cutoff for schools within the District XI/RCN footprint. All schools above that number qualify as “big schools” in our poll. These schools consist of Parkland, Liberty, Allen, Easton, Emmaus, Liberty, Dieruff, Freedom, Stroudsburg, Pleasant Valley, Northampton, Nazareth, E. Stroudsburg-South, Whitehall, Southern Lehigh and Bangor. “Small schools” (below 400-male enrollment) consist of Saucon Valley, Central Catholic, Bethlehem Catholic, Northwestern, Wilson, Palisades, Palmerton, Salisbury, Notre Dame, Pen Argyl, Nolehi and Catasauqua. Each pollster will identify their top five teams in each group; the top school gets five points, the second team gets four points and so on, with an average score determining the order of teams in the poll.
With the particulars out of the way, here’s a look at how this week’s poll shakes out…
BIG SCHOOL FB Poll (11 pollsters)
1) Parkland – 55 total votes (11 -1st place votes)
2) Freedom — 36
3) Easton — 34
4) Liberty — 19
5) Whitehall – 12
Other schools receiving more than one vote: Emmaus
SMALL SCHOOLS FB Poll (10 pollsters)
1) Saucon Valley – 45 total votes (6 – 1st place votes)
2) Bethlehem Catholic – 38 (3 – 1st place vote)
3) Central Catholic– 28 (1 – 1st place vote)
4) Northern Lehigh — 21
5) Notre Dame — 13
Other schools receiving more than one vote: Northwestern
The big shake-up in this week’s poll occurs with the smaller schools. Saucon Valley’s impressive showing versus up-and-coming Salisbury, coupled with Becahi’s loss to Liberty, pushes the Panthers into the number-one spot. Central Catholic also looked solid last weekend, which moves the Vikings up one spot (we’ll see Central Catholic play Whitehall this Saturday, tape-delayed on RCN-TV). Notre Dame’s win over Northwestern allows the Crusaders to flip-flop positions with the Tigers and move into the fifth spot.
All of the “big schools” in our poll remained undefeated last weekend, so the top five (six, if you include Emmaus) all stayed exactly where they were in our previous poll. The Hornets will get an opportunity to move up in our poll if they could pull off a win over Easton this Friday (see the game live on RCN-TV).
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We also had an opportunity over the last two weeks to talk with some of the local high school football coaches about their own teams, and their opinions on the other teams in the region. Here are a few of those interviews (more can be seen by watching our “SportsTalk” show through RCN On-Demand or by checking out our podcast at rcn.com/atvn/sports-talk).
Feel free to send us your opinions on our poll to RCNSportsTalk@rcn.com and join us this Thursday, live at 7pm on RCN-TV. We might read your emails live on the air during this program. This week’s guest list will include Dave Mika from EasternPAfootball.com to talk about high school football teams, players and current issues across Pennsylvania. Additionally on this Thursday’s show, we’ll be speaking with Redskins radio announcer Craig Hoffman to discuss the upcoming NFL season, as well as gaining insights into Washington’s season opening contest against Miami.
Don’t forget to check back to the “SportsTalk Shop” throughout the fall for the latest results of our bi-weekly high school football poll.
