Patriots keep rolling
Freedom pulls away for 5th straight win
If a highlight film is made of the 2023 Freedom High School football season, it should feature a one-word title: Resilience.
Coming off three straight appearances in District 11 championship games and 6A gold in 2021, the Patriots stumbled out of the gate at 1-4 this season. Two of the defeats came by one point after Freedom squandered sizable leads.
But Freedom found its stride in back-to-back shutout wins over East Stroudsburg South and Bethlehem Catholic and continued the roll through wins over Easton and Emmaus to clinch a District 11 6A tournament spot.
The Patriots displayed their resiliency again Saturday in their annual rivalry game against Liberty.
Freedom had a 14-0 lead vanish as the Hurricanes staged drives after interceptions to tie the game at 14 with 6:57 left in the third quarter.
But on their first play from scrimmage on the next possession, the Patriots used a gadget play that had junior receiver Shacre Colwell finding a wideopen Jelani Fedrick for a 53-yard touchdown.
It set in motion a 27-0 run by Freedom that carried it to a 41-14 victory over the Hurricanes in the 57th meeting of Bethlehem public schools at Bethlehem Area School District Stadium on a day that felt much more like the regular-season opener instead of the finale.
Freedom’s fifth straight win in the series and this season allowed it to solidify the fourth seed in the 6A subregional, which will begin Friday night. The Patriots will host No. 5 seed Emmaus in a rematch of a 25-19 Freedom win on Oct. 20.
Spirited Freedom coach Jason Roeder wasn’t thinking about that game, however, as he celebrated the Christmas City title with his team on the sun-drenched BASD turf.
“Right now, it’s all about being city champs and representing our school the right way and getting our community a big win,” Roeder said. “It’s a credit to our kids. It wasn’t easy going through that skid, especially with what we’re used to around here. But we stayed together, we stayed tight. We pushed through it, and
we survived. Resiliency is the right word. For teenagers to be able to do that, it’s a testament to them.”
The game-turning play was actually a team effort as well.
“Our quarterbacks coach, Kevin Morton, put it in a couple of weeks ago and our offensive coordinator, Ben Reph, called it at the right time,” Roeder said. “The kids executed it perfectly and it was exactly what we needed to gain the momentum back. It came at the right time.”
Roeder said he trusts Colwell to make that throw “most of the time.”
“He’s got the arm and he can definitely do it,” Roeder said. “He’s thrown a few quackers in practice a few times that have scared us a little bit, but he put that one right on the middle.”
Colwell, who later caught a TD pass and made a 35-yard reception to set up another score, said he had a lot of confidence in himself and in his teammates.
“You just have to play and make things happen,” he said. “You just have to keep pushing play-by-play. Week-by-week you just keep playing. We’re excited for the playoffs, but winning this game is important, too. We just had to stay focused all week.”
Junior quarterback Chase Walker had to keep his focus after he was intercepted by Liberty’s Jahsi Cole to end a drive late in the first half and then was picked off by the Hurricanes’ Jake Pukszyn on the fourth play of the second half.
Walker, who hit Amare DuBoise for the game’s first score in the first quarter, came back to score on his own 4-yard run and
then hit Colwell for a 2-yard connection to close the scoring. Jiovanni Richardson and Noah Pierre also had rushing TDs for Freedom.
“We like to use that word resilience a lot around here and as a team we had that today,” Walker said. “We slowed down a little bit and they got back in the game. But once we got the flow back, we were going at it again. We thought Liberty was being over-aggressive and we used that to our advantage.”
Walker said the turnaround started when the team began playing for each other more.
“That was the biggest thing,” he said. “When you play for each other, everything’s easier.”
Nothing came easily for Liberty after it got off to a 2-0 start, but the Hurricanes competed well in most of the eight games it lost over the last two monrths.
Sophomore Gabe Green established himself as one of the top running backs in the EPC and he scored on a TD run and Pukszyn, who is also a basketball star, is another sophomore star to keep an eye on. He had four catches for 67 yards against Freedom. Quarterback Caden Vermuelen ran for more than 100 yards and a TD.
“We had to switch up some personnel on [Pukszyn],” Roeder said. “I’ve known him since he was born. Our kids went to daycare together and he was obviously causing us some problems. We also had to be wary on the quarterback keeps in that one formation.”
Pukszyn, Vermuelen and Cole are all members of the Liberty basketball team. Practice for the 2023-24 season begins Nov. 17.