High school football season is now in full swing.<\/p>\n
Following a bunch of interesting contests within the RCN viewing area this past weekend, it’s time to examine our \u201cweek two\u201d edition of the District XI\/RCN HS Football Bi-Weekly Poll.<\/p>\n
First, a quick recap of our poll structure.\u00a0 Our pollsters consist of numerous people from throughout the entire Lehigh Valley region.\u00a0 Our voting panel consists of local media members from various\u00a0 outlets, along with local coaches and athletic directors from across the entire district.\u00a0 The voters are not identified so they can give their honest impressions without any worry of outside pressures or \u201cbulletin board\u201d material, and we rotate different pollsters from different schools each year, including guests from our biggest to our smallest schools.<\/p>\n
As in previous years, we take the 400-male enrollment number as the cutoff for schools within the District XI\/RCN footprint.\u00a0 All schools above that number qualify as \u201cbig schools\u201d 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.\u00a0 \u201cSmall schools\u201d (below 400-male enrollment) consist of Saucon Valley, Central Catholic, Bethlehem Catholic, Northwestern, Wilson, Palisades, Palmerton, Salisbury, Notre Dame, Pen Argyl, Nolehi and Catasauqua.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
With the particulars out of the way, here\u2019s a look at how this week\u2019s poll shakes out\u2026<\/p>\n
BIG SCHOOL FB Poll<\/strong> (11 pollsters) SMALL SCHOOLS FB Poll<\/strong> (10 pollsters) The big shake-up in this week’s poll occurs with the smaller schools.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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).\u00a0 Notre Dame’s win over Northwestern allows the Crusaders to flip-flop positions with the Tigers and move into the fifth spot.<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0 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).
\n1)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Parkland \u2013 55 total votes (11 -1st place votes)
\n2)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Freedom — 36
\n3)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Easton — 34
\n4)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Liberty — 19
\n5)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Whitehall \u2013 12
\nOther schools receiving more than one vote:\u00a0 Emmaus<\/p>\n
\n1)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Saucon Valley \u2013 45 total votes (6 – 1st place votes)
\n2)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Bethlehem Catholic \u2013 38 (3 \u2013 1st place vote)
\n3)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Central Catholic– 28 (1 – 1st place vote)
\n4)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Northern Lehigh — 21
\n5)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Notre Dame — 13
\nOther schools receiving more than one vote: Northwestern<\/p>\n
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\nWe 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.\u00a0 Here are a few of those interviews (more can be seen by watching our \u201cSportsTalk\u201d show through RCN On-Demand or by checking out our podcast at rcn.com\/atvn\/sports-talk<\/a>).<\/p>\n