Blue Eagles prevail as top squads battle to wire
Both Nazareth football coach Tom Falzone and Emmaus leader Harold Fairclough called it a great night for local football.
Friday night’s meeting between the Blue Eagles and Green Hornets, a battle of two of the area’s best and two top-10 state-ranked teams in Class 6A, went to the wire before a packed house at Nazareth’s Andy Leh Stadium.
Falzone’s Blue Eagles prevailed 20-14 and as exciting as it was, the reality of Saturday morning was that the two very could well meet again in a few more weeks with even more at stake.
Nazareth got two touchdowns in the third quarter and two 42-yard field goals by Chris Bugbee, who was looking for redemption after two missed PATs against Emmaus in the District 11 playoffs last year. The Blue Eagles held the Green Hornets to two touchdowns in improving 7-1 overall, 5-1 in the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference’s South Division.
It was Emmaus’ first loss the season after seven wins and dropped the Green Hornets to 5-1 in the EPC South.
The District 11 website revealed updated power rankings Saturday that showed both Nazareth and Emmaus had clinched District 11-2-4 Class 6A subregional berths along with Northampton (8-0) and Freedom (6-2).
“It’s always great to see that green line over your name on the website,” Falzone said.
As for the performance on Friday night, he said: “I’m real proud of the effort and how the kids responded to the challenge of playing a real good football team. It’s always a chess match when you play Emmaus and their coaching staff. Our coordinators made some good adjustments. We’ve done that all year. We’ve become a pretty good second-half team. The kids executed well enough and we were able to find a way.”
At the same time, Falzone said a review of the game film revealed a lot of mistakes.
“We have to clean up a lot of things,” he said. “We had a season-high in penalties [9 for 85 yards] and have to do a better job in a number of areas, but it was still a big win for our kids because this was a game our kids really wanted. Emmaus ended our season in the district playoffs last year [20-19] and it’s the game we thought about all offseason.”
Emmaus led 7-3 at halftime on a 33-yard pass from Jake Fotta to running back Tylik Jarvis. The Green Hornets had a chance to add to the lead, but an interception in the end zone by Nolan Lobb ended the threat just before halftime.
Nazareth seized the lead and added to it with back-toback scoring drives to start the second half.
One ended with a Sonny Sasso TD pass to Frankie Mroz and the other resulted in a short scoring run by Sasso. In the middle was a three-and-out possession by Emmaus
The Blue Eagles picked up the offensive tempo in taking a 17-7 lead with 3:48 left.
Emmaus answered with a touchdown drive capped by a short Josiah Williams run on the first play of the fourth quarter, but the Green Hornets wouldn’t score again.
Bugbee added his second field goal with 48 seconds left and Nazareth was able to make a tackle in bounds to close out the game after Emmaus, without any timeouts, drove into the red zone.
“If the game had gone on a little longer, who knows what would have happened, but the kids made the plays at the end and it was a big win for us,” Falzone said. “Credit Emmaus for holding us to a field goal in the first half, but credit our defense for holding them to 14 for the whole game. That’s a good team with an outstanding quarterback. We just have a lot of things to work on.”
Fairclough had the same mindset after his staff gathered on Saturday morning.
“We didn’t make enough plays to win,” he said. “Offensively we got into the red zone four or five times and didn’t come away with points. We had a missed field goal, we had an interception and a couple of other things happened. In a game like that, you have to score on every possession, especially inside the red zone. Defensively, we did a good job holding them to a couple of field goal attempts, but we also didn’t tackle very well. There were one or two missed assignments that cost us.”
Fairclough said he thought it was a good matchup that gave us team plenty of room to grow.
“We give them 24 hours to learn from this, come back, regroup, reset and prepare for an even bigger one against Easton at Cottingham Stadium.” he said. “Easton is playing better and we haven’t beaten them in four years. I know our kids will get excited for the opportunity. We’ve just got to get this one out of our system. We have an outstanding group that will rebound and come back from this one.”
While Emmaus heads to Easton, Nazareth visits Whitehall after the Zephyrs continued their surprising run with a 37-6 win over Allentown Central Catholic to improve to 5-3
“Whitehall is a real good football team with a lot of weapons,” Falzone said. “They are playing really good football right now. They will be another great challenge for us.”