Northwestern Lehigh finally gets its gold
Northwestern trailed two plays into Friday night’s District 11 Class 3A championship game against two-time defending champion North Schuylkill.
Doubt and panic for a Tigers program that came up short several times since its last district title in 2014?
Nope.
“I ran over to Cade [Christopher] after he gave that [83-yard touchdown] up and said, ‘Hey, you’re making it fun for us,’ ” junior Dalton Clymer said. “I still felt confident. I felt fun. It was starting to snow. I knew it was going to be fun and I loved it.”
Christopher had a good time, too. The senior quarterback ran for 214 yards and a touchdown and threw a TD pass to lead Northwestern to a 34-14 victory at Lehighton Area School District Multi-Purpose Stadium.
It was the Tigers’ fifth district title, first since 2014.
Northwestern (11-2) faces District 12 champion Neumann Goretti (8-3) in next weekend’s PIAA quarterfinals at a site and time to be announced. North Schuylkill’s season ends at 10-3. Neumann Goretti beat District 2 champ Scranton Prep 22-14.
Clymer ran for a touchdown and caught two TD passes — one each from Christopher and freshman Mason Bollinger. He also orchestrated a stellar defensive performance by the Tigers after the game’s first two plays.
Ty Meck’s 72-yard strip fumble and return for a score with 2:29 left capped off the stellar defensive effort. Eli Zimmerman earlier in the second half recovered a fumble at the Tigers’ 2-yard line to keep the Spartans from pulling within a touchdown.
“We knew they wanted to get out of bounds so we started playing out more,” Meck said. “Me and Christopher stripped the ball out, the
ball fell in my lap and just started running down the sideline.”
The Spartans managed only 171 yards offense besides the two big scoring plays and the 63 yards in the final two minutes when the game was decided.
The Tigers, meanwhile, grinded out 318 rushing yards against a big, physical front seven. They threw only four passes and punted just twice.
“The line opened up big holes for me,” said Christopher, who has 1,814 rushing yards this season, third-most in school history. “I just followed those boys and ran through and picked up those first downs, some were crucial. I give all the credit to them.”
The coaching staff also gets credit for coming up with a stellar all-around game plan. Coach
Greg Mitchell prepped the fearless defense. Dave Kerschner worked the offensive and defensive fronts and got credit for one of the new plays that worked to perfection — a 10-yard touchdown pass from freshman Mason Bollinger to Clymer that finished off an 11-play drive to start the second half and give Northwestern a 28-14 lead.
The Tigers converted twice on third down, including the scoring play, and once on fourth down on that pivotal series after the Spartans scored on a flea flicker pass late in the first half to seize momentum.
“You watch us over the years and you know we always have a couple new wrinkles up our sleeve,” head coach Josh Snyder said. “We used a lot of them last week. We usually have a couple weeks to practice them, but we drew up a couple on
short notice and we cashed them in.
“I was ready to use all of them again. We’re here to try to help the kids win and we’ll do anything to help that cause. We’re not afraid. If we go down, we go down swinging.”
Down 28-14, North Schuylkill switched things up and gave the ball to Jaxson Chowansky. The bulldozing junior had carries of 36, 11, 6 and 3 yards to get the Spartans to the Tigers’ 1-yard line.
But Chowansky fumbled on firstand-goal. Three Spartans seemed to have it covered, but it squirted out and Zimmerman was there to recover it.
“Everything slowed down,” Zimmerman said. “It looked they had it, but it came out and I jumped on it.”
Christopher then broke loose on a 54-yard run on third-and-long to give the Tigers breathing room.
The Spartans stopped the Tigers on fourth down, but then were forced into a 3-and-out with just less than 10 minutes left.
Northwestern then got four first downs to chew up precious time. North Schuylkill got the ball back with 3:10 left, but Meck then finally put the game away with his fumbler return for a score.
Half of waves
North Schuylkill scored on the game’s second play from scrimmage when Trevor Minalda hit Joey Flail on a deep post. Flair outran Cade Christopher for an 83-yard touchdown and a 6-0 lead.
After an exchange of punts, Northwestern scored the next three touchdowns, starting with Christopher hitting Clymer with a 26-yard screen pass on fourth down to tie the game.
Christopher had a 22-yard punt return to set up Northwestern’s next score, a 1-yard TD run by Clymer with 8:04 left in the first half. Christopher’s 2-point run gave the Tigers a 14-6 lead.
Meck ended North Schuylkill’s next drive with a 9-yard tackle for loss on third down. A partially blocked punt gave Northwestern the ball back in good field position at its 42.
Two plays later, Christopher got space around the left side after faking a handoff to Clymer and sprinted for a 58-yard TD run and a 21-6 advantage.
North Schuylkill got muchneeded momentum on its last series of the first half when Flail threw a halfback pass to Collin Stanakis, who came back to the ball for the catch then outran several defenders for a 44-yard score with 53 seconds left in the second quarter.