Friday night flashback: Lots of fun and flaws and 149 to 0

FROM KEITH GROLLER

It's early Saturday morning and I'm digesting another Friday night of high school football.

Lots of good stuff out there.

Nazareth rallies past Liberty in a 42-41 thriller ... Emmaus gets a 44-yard field goal from Dalton Landis to beat Parkland at the final whistle ... Bangor and Southern Lehigh play a two-pointer. ... Stroudsburg goes to 3-0 with an overtime win ... Catty and Northwestern keep rolling, etc., etc.

I even considered the traffic jam to -- and from -- the Emmaus-Parkland game to be a good thing. It showed that people in those communities, even in these hectic times, still rally around their football teams on a given Friday night.

l will try to avoid spending too much on the disaster that continues to be Allentown football and the fact that tonight had to be an all-time low ... I mean, c'mon ... Whitehall and Freedom 149, Allen and Dieruff 0?

As I said in my prediction post, the madness has to stop.

I am told the Allentown Athletic Council broached the subject this past week. Various options were discussed. I'd still prefer to see either the consolidation of programs or independent schedules, but I heard there's a real good possibility that ASD will fold up the programs and save the money.

Even people who staunchly believed things could be turned around with more care from the district or better coaching are now admitting this thing is beyond return.

Five or 10 years ago I would have considered ending the programs to be an outrage. But now, stuck in this league where the two teams are completely overmatched week in, week out -- and they truly have been for four or five years -- it may be the right thing to do.

I hate to see it come to that. I'd rather see another alternative, but 149-0?

I knew it was bad, but 149-0? This may have been the last straw.

Anyway, from what I've seen so far, everybody's a little flawed.

I've seen Freedom, Whitehall, Emmaus and now Parkland out of the LVC in person and they're all pretty good, but far from perfect, especially defensively.

And that's what is going to keep things interesting right through the regular season and into the playoffs.

No one's going 16-0 this year, that's for sure. With Parkland and Liberty losing, the LVC is already down to four unbeatens and I think Becahi will fall on Saturday.

Everybody's going to make mistakes.

It's how you fight through those mistakes that's going to separate the winners from the losers. In the game I saw, Emmaus was able to do that; Parkland couldn't.

Looking back, here's how I came out of the night:

BEST PICK OF THE NIGHT -- Nazareth over Liberty.

WORST PICK OF THE NIGHT -- Marian over Mahanoy Area.

THING THAT MADE ME GO "UMMM" -- Hearing about the total domination by Easton over Northampton.

INTERESTING FACT I STUMBLED UPON -- Emmaus kicking coach Drew Reinhard, confident that Dalton Landis would make his game-winning 44-yard field goal, also kicked a game-winner against Parkland back in 2004. And Emmaus assistant Mike Sculley telling me that this was the third time he was the member of a staff that experienced a last-second win by field goal over a Jim Morgans-coached team.

MOST SORRY TO HEAR ABOUT -- The end of the IronPigs season. Would have loved to have seen a Game 5 at Coca-Cola Park for the International League championship on Saturday night.

WHAT CAUSED A DOUBLE-TAKE -- I know that the coaches now move around as much as the players do at the high school level, but it still took me back for a second to see Sam Senneca, so ingrained for so long in Bethlehem, working as Parkland's defensive coordinator.

WHAT'S UP ON SATURDAY -- A busy radio show on AM 1470 with five guests -- Morning Call colleagues Stephen Miller and Mark Wogenrich, former Morning Call sports editor and Lafayette football beat writer Paul Reinhard, Whitehall AD Bob Hartman and Becahi boys basketball Mike Frew to talk about the Coaches vs. Cancer campaign and Bob Hurley, Sr., coming to the Lehigh valley.

http://blogs.mcall.com/groller/