Golden Hawks set up Holy War Part 2
Will play Allentown Central Catholic on Saturday for district championship
Through six games this season Bethlehem Catholic quarterback Luke Thomas had thrown just four TD passes and seven interceptions.
For the Golden Hawks to get to where they wanted to go, Thomas and the passing game had to take flight.
On Saturday afternoon at Bethlehem Area School District Stadium, Air Thomas took off and the landing was in the District 11 Class 4A championship game.
Thomas completed 10 of 14 passes for 152 yards and four scores, and the top-seeded Golden Hawks routed No. 4 seed Blue Mountain 41-16 to set up a second meeting in three weeks with Allentown Central Catholic, this time with 4A gold and a trip to the state tournament at stake.
Running back trey Tremba, another junior, ran for 216 yards on 28 carries and scored three TDs and the Trojans rolled to a 42-14 win over Nazareth to advance to the semifinals.
In avenging a 28-10 loss to Nazareth on Sept. 2, No. 6 seeded Parkland ran up more than 300 yards rushing and 466 yards overall. The Trojans improved to 7-4 and set up a date at No. 2 at Northampton Friday night. The Konkrete Kids survived a rematch with Stroudsburg, edging the Mountaineers 14-7.
The other 6A semifinal will feature Freedom at Emmaus. Both the fourth-seeded Patriots and the top-seeded Green Hornets won their quarterfinal-round games handily.
Nazareth, looking for its third district gold in four seasons, had its season end at 9-2.
Quarterback and free safety Sonny Sasso, who led the EPC South through the regular season with 132 completions in 197 attempts for 1,972 yards and 21 touchdowns and just two interceptions while running for 266 yards and six scores, did not play and would have not played the rest of the season had the Blue Eagles advanced. He had surgery on his injured throwing hand on Friday.
“It didn’t matter to us if Sasso played,” Parkland coach Tim Moncman said. “I put a game plan in on Sunday and it was the same for Sasso or for [Chris] Bugbee. Everybody has injuries. We lost our quarterback for two weeks during the regular season. It’s part of football. We had two starting offensive linemen down and we had to have other guys step up. Tremba was like a machine tonight and [receivers] Jack Harrison and Nakhi Bullock had great games. If we can continue to play for 48 minutes, we’re going to be tough.”
Sasso was a talented free safety and one of f Nazareth’s leading tacklers with 74 stops, including one sack.
Nazareth tried several guys to fill his spot, but it’s tough to replace the intangibles of a defending state wrestling champ who is also a Virginia Tech commit.
In the previous win over Parkland, Sasso passed for 144 yards and a pair of touchdowns and also ran for 70 yards.
This time, most of the big plays were made by Parkland.
Spang completed 11 of 19 passes for 165 yards with a touchdown and he shook off an interception.
His favorite target was Harrison who had six catches for 133 yards.
“We had a great week of practice and it translated to the game,” Harrison said. “It didn’t matter who was playing quarterback for them. We had the same game plan and went out there and did our thing. For us, all the pieces are coming together. We have a lot of playmakers and we want to get everyone the ball and get as many touches as we can and as many points as we can.”
Parkland scored on its first two possessions and never looked back.
Tremba, who was also injured earlier this season, had his second 200-yard rushing night of the season and gave all the credit to his line which featured Nate Kemmerer, Russell Clark, Kale Kumernitsky, Owen Broadhead and Ali Wezza. It was the first time they started a game together with Kumernitsky replacing Kaleb Beers at center after he went down in the previous week’s game at Emmaus.
“The line did just amazing for me,” Tremba said. “I couldn’t get that many yards without them. I can’t ask for a better effort from them. We had to come out and play a hard 48 minutes and we did a great job of that after practicing hard all week. We have to do the same thing again next week because Northampton is an undefeated team and we can’t take them lightly.”
Nazareth tried to stay with the Trojans but failed to score on two first-half trips to the red zone. A fumble set up one of the Trojans’ touchdowns in a 21-point third quarter that broke it open.
“We gave it everything we had tonight,” Blue Eagles coach Tom Falzone said. “Offensively we didn’t have it. We weren’t clicking in the first half. We got down in the red zone a few times and did not come away with points and that hurts you. I thought our defense did a great job in the first half holding them to 14 points. That would have been great on any other night. But in the second half, they just turned it on. They’re strong and they just outmuscled us and they were able to do whatever they wanted to do with us.”
Bugbee, a senior, completed 18 of 32 passes for 239 yards and wasn’t intercepted. He found Nolan Lobb for a 74-yard touchdown and Collin Wells later added a short scoring run set up by a 46-yard completion to Lobb, but it wasn’t enough.
Parkland’s defense applied constant pressure led by Nate Kemmerer who had a sack among his five tackles and Victor Pagan who had nine tackles. Tremba added six stops.
It’s hard to say what difference Sasso would have made had he been in there, but Falzone believed his loss was significant.
“It is hard to replace a guy like Sonny, who is an all-league, all-area player in my opinion,” Falzone said. “He’s a football player on both sides of the ball and we love him. But I give credit to the guys who took his place. I give credit to [Bugbee] because it’s hard to come into a district game against Parkland. He didn’t get to get his feet wet against someone else first. He had to jump right into the grinder and I give him a lot of credit. We had to step up around him and we didn’t do a good enough job of that. But I’m proud of these kids. They earned the EPC South championship which is very hard to do.”
The series
Parkland extended its lead in the series with Nazareth to 26-17. However, the Blue Eagles had won two of the previous meetings including the 2019 District 11 6A title contest that went to overtime. Parkland had won nine games in a row entering that game.
The series began in 1956 and Nazareth won the first seven meetings and 11 of the first 14.
The teams had met four previous times in district playoffs with each squad winning twice.
Parkland has won 10 district championships, Nazareth three.
Stat stuff
Nazareth’s Mason Kuehner was coming off a spectacular 11-catch, 133-yard night against Easton. Kuehner, a junior who has earned Division I interest, entered the Parkland game with 56 catches and joined Nazareth’s “100 catch” club with 102 career receptions for 1,616 yards and had 25 TDs with another year to go. His 17 TDs this regular season included eight by reception, six rushing TDs, and one each on kickoff, punt, and interception returns.
Sasso’s season ended with him not only leading the EPC South in passing yards and passing TDs, but he was third in District 11 in both categories behind only Notre Dame-Green Pond’s Danny Darno and Palmerton’s Matt Machalik on leaderboards.