Around District 11: The Travels of Guy & Pam Week Eleven:  District 11 Goes 4-1

2022.13.  It may have only been the first week of the district playoffs, but five schools from District 11 played against foes from outside the district.  And our teams accounted themselves quite well, winning four of the five.

In the 6A subregional playoffs, the Freedom Patriots, the number four seed from D11, took down the top seed from District 2, the Hazleton Cougars, by Mercy Rule shutout.  In another 6A game, the overall top seeded Emmaus Hornets easily handled the Wolfpack of Wilkes Barre.  In the Eastern Football Conference Championship games, the Pottsville Crimson Tide ended the hopes of the District 3 Big Spring Tigers, and the Pen Argyl Green Knights Mercy Rule shutout the Susquehanna Community Sabers from District 2.  Our lone loss was District 3’s Berks Catholic Saints taking it to the Pine Grove Cardinals.

Pam and Guy were at two of the above games: Pottsville and Freedom.  We prefer to see different schools in action more than regular season rematches.  If both teams are D11 schools, we tend to look for matchups of teams that did not play each other in the regular season.

Out weekend began on Thursday as for the second year in a row, we were blessed with Thursday Night Football thanks to the Eastern Football Conference.  This year we even had a choice of games.  On Friday we toyed with the idea of dipping our toes into the New Jersey high school football stream, but stayed with the tried and true choice of the Freedom Patriots.  On Saturday the plan was always to head to former PSAC football school Mansfield University as they hosted Navy in sprint football.  We found out that the PSAC men’s and women’s state cross country championships would also be held in Mansfield that morning, giving us a stand up triple for the day.  Sunday morning found us in Northampton, not for Konkrete Kid football, but for a Kutztown University hosted Western Saddle Equestrian competition at Willow Brook Farms.  Guy ended the week solo at the Bridgeport Speedway, NJ on Sunday evening.

GAME 39.  THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2022.   EASTERN FOOTBALL CONFERENCE 4A CHAMPIONSHIP.  BIG SPRING TIGERS @ POTTSVILLE CRIMSON TIDE.  Welcome to playoff football and the annoying requirement to purchase all tickets in advance online, with the requisite “fees” attached to the ticket price.  As the Pottsville AD told me: “Sorry, but cash is not an option.”

Many think the Eastern Football Conference is a joke because virtually all the teams playing for championships in recent years have had losing records during the regular season.  For Pam and Guy, we are just happy to have more game options, especially games involving D11 teams.

The Eastern Football Conference is made up of approximately 112 member schools, and they currently hold championships in four classifications.  There used to be as many as six as we recall, and at one time they had four teams in some classifications meaning semi-final and finals on consecutive weekends.  We looked at the EFC website for information about the storied history of Eastern Conference and a complete listing of previous champions but found it woefully lacking much useful historical information.

Last year we were at Bangor for the 4A championship that featured two D11 teams, as Bangor defeated Saucon Valley.  That game was also on a Thursday night of Week 11, but couldn’t have been more different.  Where last year the game temperatures were in the 30s, this year they were in the 60s, the high 60s no less!

This year we had the choice of two Thursday night games.  We could have gone to see Big Spring at Pottsville in 4A, or Pine Grove at Berks Catholic in 1A/2A.  Both were right up our alley, as both featured D11 teams playing against teams from another district.  We had never seen either Big Springs or Berks Catholic.  Having just been at Pottsville two weeks prior, we normally would have chosen to see Pine Grove.  But Dr. Pam had to teach in Bloomsburg until mid-afternoon, and meeting in Pottsville made a lot more sense than trying to make it to Berks Catholic or for Guy to go it alone.

The reason some scoff at Eastern Conference is that the participating teams are all teams that didn’t make the PIAA playoffs.  And as those playoffs kept expanding to add more teams and thus more dollars to the PIAA coffers, the choices for Eastern Conference became more limited.  For example, this game had #14 ranked Pottsville and #17 ranked Big Springs playing for the championship.  In the other Thursday game, it was #14 Berks Catholic vs. #25 Pine Grove.  No team ranked higher than #14 played in any of the four classification championship games.

But it’s a chance for eight teams to play one more football game, and we don’t see how that’s not a good thing.  We met outside the stadium, Pam coming from work heading east, Guy from home heading west.  The refreshment stand was not nearly as good as on our visit two weeks prior, as apparently anticipation of a less than normal Friday night crowd led to a limited menu.  They did earn the coveted popcorn bonus point (only a buck a bag!) but curiously, popcorn was not available until starting at halftime.

Two weeks prior, we sat on the visitor side and saw Southern Lehigh handle Pottsville.  This time we decided to sit on the home side and it was the Crimson Tide that scored the victory.  It was a chance for a game on Thursday night of Week 11, so in our opinion everyone in attendance was a winner.

GAME 40.  NOVEMBER 4, 2022.   HAZLETON COUGARS @ FREEDOM PATRIOTS.  So far this year, we had seen the Freedom freshman and JV teams play at BASD Stadium, the JV team play on the turf field at Freedom, and the varsity team play at Easton.  But we had yet to see the varsity play on their home court.  And this would be our last chance.  But that’s not why we chose this game to attend.  We picked this game because once again it was a chance to see two teams face off that normally do not play each other.

BASD is low on our list of refreshment stands anyway, and they no longer have the fry truck, something that had been available for decades.  On this night, they didn’t even have the home side refreshment stand opened at all.  Luckily, this isn’t our first time around Elizabeth Avenue, and we stopped on the way for tacos.

On paper, this looked like it should have been a good matchup.  Both teams entered with an identical 8-2 record and were seeded right next to each other, fourth and fifth.

One of the highlights of the game was “Shadow,” a black Labrador dog who retrieves the kicking tee after each Freedom kickoff.  What a great addition to the team, and the fans adore him, as did we.

It may have looked like an even match by record and seeding on paper, but on the field it was all Pates, who won their 8^th straight after two losses in their first three games.  They even had leads in both their losses, but couldn’t hold them.  Not only was this a playoff Mercy Rule win, but also a shutout.

On the way out, we overheard Hazleton fans saying that three of their starters were out for injury, so what did you expect the outcome to be?  To that we say by Week 11, just about every team has injured starters.  If you want to play high school football in Pennsylvania in December, you need a bench much deeper than the starting eleven.

It’s sort of a shame that Freedom, a higher seed than Parkland, has to go to the number one seed Emmaus to play this week, while lower seed Parkland gets North Division champ Northampton.  But if the Pates want to repeat as district champions, they have to beat them all eventually.  So the order doesn’t really matter.  For the Pates to repeat as champs, they might very well have to avenge both of their early season losses on consecutive weeks.  Should be interesting.

GAME 41.  SATURDAY NOVEMBER 5, 2022.   UNITED STATES NAVAL ACADEMY MIDSHIPMAN @ MANSFIELD UNIVERSITY MOUNTAINEERS.  This trip accomplished a number of items.  First it gave us the stand up triple, as the state cross-country championships for all 18 PSAC schools were held there in the morning.  Second and foremost, it was a first-time visit to see Mansfield football.  As a former member of the PSAC, we added Mansfield to our Master Plan, which now shows 85 different football teams to visit in three years, 2021-2023.  This was the 65^th, so we are well on our way.  And third, this was our first chance to see sprint football.  For those unfamiliar, sprint football is exactly the same as football, with a 178-pound weight limit (originally 150 pounds in the 1930s).  The competitors have to weigh-in two days before games, just like wrestlers weigh-in before matches.  Although some think sprint football inferior, even silly, that would be akin to saying all weight classes in wrestling are inferior or silly compared to the heavyweight class.  Sprint football is considered an NCAA varsity sport.

Mansfield competes in the CSFL (Collegiate Sprint Football League), one of two sprint football leagues in the US.  There are nine teams in the league.  Some schools, like Penn and Cornell, field both Ivy League and CSFL teams.  Others like Mansfield, only field a sprint football team.  The academy teams from Army West Point and Navy are the teams to beat.  Rutgers was the initial champion in 1933.  But since the end of World War II, Army and Navy have dominated.  The most recent champion not from one of the academies was Penn in 2016.  Of note is that sprint football is also where the Princeton Tigers set the organized football record of going winless for 16 straight seasons before dropping the sport in 2015.  President Jimmy Carter played sprint football for Navy, President Joe Biden’s son Beau played for Penn, and New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft played for Cornell.

Mansfield has a nice stadium, but it must have been among the smallest when they played in the PSAC.  Admission was just $5, a great bargain because when they are playing nothing seems different from watching any other football game, other than an increase in relying on speed and agility over weight and strength.  We do not find that to be a bad tradeoff at all.

Mansfield was having a good season, coming in at 5-2 including a first-ever win over the Penn Quakers.  But Navy had a perfect 7-0 record.  A win would send Navy into the championship game this coming Sunday.  Navy was obviously the favorite, and jumped out to a 14-0 lead.  But Mansfield didn’t fold, and fought back to tie it at 14 midway through the second quarter.  The Mounties had the momentum, the home crowd, and were unbeaten on campus this season.

Then it all went to crap in a hand basket, if I may mix my metaphors.  Just about everything went wrong for Mansfield during the next 15 minutes, and by the middle of the next quarter, they went from even at 14 to down 43-14.  And that was all she wrote.  Navy faces Army for the sprint football championship this Sunday afternoon in Annapolis.  We would sure like to go to that game some year but not this year as Pam is still teaching (for four more weeks) and is headed to New Orleans on Tuesday for a conference.

THIS WEEKEND.  Guy looked at the 20 teams still on our Hit List to visit and saw we could knock off another pair this week, Phillipsburg on Friday for the NJ sectional championship and another PSAC college on Saturday.  But Pam said: “Wait a second.  Seeing the new stadiums/schools/teams is the most fun we’ve ever had with football without question, but it’s playoff time.  We should be going to the district championship games in D11.  The new stadium travels should be mostly done during the regular season.”  That indeed makes sense.  Good point, Pam!  So we totally revamped our weekend schedule to include not one, not two, but three District 11 championship games.  While 3A and 6A are still playing semifinals, we can make three of the four championship games.  On Friday we have to choose between the 1A game at Leighton and the 5A game at Catasauqua.  The choice here is the 5A game, not for either of the teams as much as the fact that we haven’t been to the stadium in Catty this year, and not only did Pam graduate from Catty, but we lived there for the first dozen years we were married.  On Saturday we can do the stand-up double, with the 2A championship game at 1:00 and the 4A championship game at 7:00, both at Whitehall, another town where we both lived at one point, albeit separately.  Saint Joseph University ice hockey is on the schedule for Sunday afternoon/evening.

UPDATE.  Due to the all-day soaking rain predicted for Friday, as of Tuesday afternoon multiple District 11 playoff games have already been moved up a day to Thursday.  That will give us an additional game day, although it might end up being a wash(out) if no games are held on Friday.  We will have to see how the entire schedule plays out before finalizing plans.  If we can do four, we will do four.

Emmaus, Northampton, Freedom, Parkland, Whitehall, Southern Lehigh, Allentown Central Catholic, Bethlehem Catholic, Northwestern Lehigh, Notre Dame-Green Pond, North Schuylkill, Palmerton, Catasauqua, Executive Education Academy, Tri-Valley, Northern Lehigh, Easton (Thanksgiving Day)

13 schools ended season after Week 10 (end of regular season)

17 more schools ended season after Week 11

Northern Lehigh remains 5^th in 1A

Northampton Konkrete Kids moved up to 6^th in 6A

Emmaus Hornets moved up to 7^th in 6A

North Schuylkill Spartans remain 8^th in 3A

Freedom Patriots are back IN at Honorable Mention in 6A

Southern Lehigh Spartans are back IN at Honorable Mention in 5A

Notre Dame—Green Pond remains Honorable Mention in 3A

Northwestern Lehigh Tigers are IN at Honorable Mention in 3A

Tri Valley remains Honorable Mention in 1A

Nazareth Blue Eagles dropped from 5^th to out of the 6A rankings after their season-ending loss to the Parkland Trojans.

Williams Valley Vikings dropped from 10^th to out of the rankings after their season ending loss to the Executive Education Academy Raptors.

1. Allentown Central Catholic Vikings (2021), 2. Bangor Slaters (2021), 3. Bethlehem Catholic Golden Hawks (2021), 4. Blue Mountain Eagles (2021), 5. Catasauqua Rough Riders (2021), 6. Dieruff Huskies (2021), 7. Easton Red Rovers—Cottingham Stadium (2022), 8. East Stroudsburg North Timberwolves (2021), 9. East Stroudsburg South Cavaliers (2022), 10. Emmaus Hornets (2021), 11. Executive Education Raptors (2021), 12. Freedom Patriots (2021), 13. Jim Thorpe Olympians (2022), 14. Lehighton Indians (2021), 15. Liberty Hurricanes (2021), 16. Mahanoy Area Golden Bears (2021), 17. Marian Catholic Colts (2021), 18. Minersville Battlin’ Miners (2021), 19. Nativity BVM Green Wave (2021), 20. Nazareth Blue Eagles (2021), 21. Northern Lehigh Bulldogs (2021), 22. Northampton Konkrete Kids (2021), 23. Northwestern Lehigh Tigers (2021), 24. North Schuylkill Spartans (2022), 25. Notre Dame Green Pond Crusaders (2021), 26. Palisades Pirates (2022), 27. Palmerton Blue Bombers (2021), 28. Panther Valley Panthers (2021), 29. Parkland Trojans (2021), 30. Pen Argyl Green Knights (2021), 31. Pine Grove Cardinals (2021), 32. Pleasant Valley Bears (2021), 33. Pocono Mountain East Cardinals (2022), 34. Pocono Mountain West Panthers (2021), 35. Pottsville Crimson Tide (2022), 36. Salisbury Township Falcons (2021), 37. Saucon Valley Panthers (2021), 38. Schuylkill Haven Hurricanes (2022), 39. Shenandoah Valley Blue Devils (2021), 40. Southern Lehigh Spartans (2021), 41. Stroudsburg Mounties (2021), 42. Tamaqua Blue Raiders (2021), 43. Tri-Valley Bulldogs (2022), 44. Whitehall Zephers (2021), 45. William Allen Canaries (2022), 46. Williams Valley Vikings (2021), 47. Wilson Area Warriors (2021)

48. ALLENTOWN CENTRAL CATHOLIC VIKINGS JV—PERCY RHUE PARK, 49. Bethlehem Catholic Golden Hawks JV–High School (2022), 50.  BLUE MOUNTAIN EAGLES JV–EAST FIELD, 51. Freedom Patriots JV—FHS Turf Field (2022), 52. Lehighton Indians JV–Old Football Stadium (2022), 53. Nativity BVM Green Wave JV—High School (2022), 54. POCONO MOUNTAIN WEST PANTHERS JV—OLD STADIUM

55. Easton Red Rovers—Lafayette College Thanksgiving Day Game (2021), 56. PHILLIPSBURG STATELINERS (FORMER EPC SCHOOL)

63. Colonial vs. Schuylkill League All-Star Game (2022 @ Schuylkill Haven)

64. Lehigh Valley All-Star Football Classic (2022 @ Nazareth)

65. PSFCA East vs. West Small School All Star Game (2022 @ Bishop McDevitt)

66. PSFCA East vs. West Big School All Star Game (2022 @ Bishop McDevitt)

67. PSFCA Pennsylvania vs. Maryland Big 33 Game (2022 @ Bishop McDevitt)

68. Schuylkill League All-Star Game (2021 @ Schuylkill Haven)

69. Bloomsburg Huskies (2022), 70. CALIFORNIA VULCANS, 71. Clarion Golden Eagles (2022), 72. East Stroudsburg Warriors (2022), 73. Edinboro Fighting Scots (2022), 74. GANNON GOLDEN KNIGHTS, 75. INDIANA CRIMSON HAWKS, 76. Kutztown Golden Bears (2022), 77. LOCK HAVEN BALD EAGLES, 78. MERCYHURST LAKERS, 79. Millersville Marauders (2022), 80. SETON HILL GRIFFINS, 81. SHEPHERD RAMS (WV), 82. SHIPPENSBURG RAIDERS, 83. SLIPPERY ROCK THE ROCK, 84. WEST CHESTER GOLDEN RAMS, 85. Mansfield Mountaineers