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Freedom Cruises to Capture City of Bethlehem Title Over Liberty.

Tagged under: District 11, Gameday Hub, News, pfn

| October 30, 2022

Patriots Defeat Cross-Town Rivals for Fourth Consecutive Time.

BETHLEHEM- Saturday afternoon, under a cloudless blue sky, at Historic Bethlehem School District Stadium, the Freedom Patriots rolled to their seventh straight win of the 2022 season with a convincing 38-7 rout of the Liberty Hurricanes in front a packed house by a score of 38-7 to capture the “City of Bethelehem” crown. Freedpom had beaten Bethlehem Catholic last week 24-13.

Unlike last years game where the Patriots trailed 13-7 at half before scoring 21 points to pull away from their rivals. This year they left little doubt of the outcome as Freedom scored the first three times they had the ball, with the running of Jalen Fletcher, who tallied three scores and quarterback Ethan Neidig tossed two scores in the win.

Fletcher got the scoring started wen he took a screen pass from Neidig and coasted to the end zone on a 45 yard play Zeyad Regab promptly added the extra-point for a 7-0 lead at the 7:31 mark of the opening quarter.

With just twelve seconds left in that opening quarter, Fletcher took a hand-off and powered his way in for a score from two yards out to make it 14-0. He would end up with 45 yards on just 12 touches for the contest.

Freedom would score seventeen points in the second quarter to take a commanding 31-0 lead at intermission and leave no doubt of who was in chage of this the 56th meeting of the two schools as the series started in 1968. Fletcher would score his last touchdown of the contest from a yard out at the 6:06 mark. Placekicker Zeyad Regab would add a 22 yard field goal for a 24-0 lead with 2:05 left and then after a Hurricane turnover, Neidig would call his own number and scramble in from five yards out with just 27 seconds left leaving the only thing to doubt was invoking the mercy rule in the second half and whether the defense could shut the Huricanes out in the final twenty-four minutes.

The Patriots kept a stream of substitutes in an out of the ball game in the second half. Neidig, who was 8 for 11 passing for 174 yards hooked up with Vincent Slepetz on a hitch-and-go rout beating two Hurricanes defenders in the back corner of the end zone to make it 38-0 with 1:35 left in the third quarter.

Liberty would not settle for having a goose-egg on the scoreboard, when Brayden McKinley would end the scoring drout with a nifty eight yard run at the 4:17 mark of the final period to put a punctuation mark to this classic rivalry.

The season ended for Liberty witha 2-8 mark overall and 0-8 in the EPC South. The Hurricanes only two wins were over Stroudsburg and East Stroudsburg South.

Freedom now 8-2 will be defending their 2021 District XI/II/IV 6A sub-regional Championship starting next Friday night against a 8-2 Hazleton Area Cougars squad out of District 2 at the friendly confines of BASD Stadium as the Patriots will be the 4th seed and the Cougars a 5th seed. Hazleton shutout Berwick 20-0.

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