Urgency arrives early for LVC's Week 1 losers

http://www.mcall.com/sports/varsity/mc-high-school-football-focus-0903-20120903,0,5542804.story FROM THE MORNING CALL Football coaches around the Lehigh Valley Conference spent the preseason discussing how tough it would be to navigate the league schedule this season. After a handful of surprising and semi-surprising results rolled in Friday, the start of LVC play arrives with added urgency for four Week 1 losers. Three teams I pegged for the top half of the LVC standings — Parkland, Whitehall and Freedom — opened the 2012 season by losing on the road. Liberty, another team expected to factor in the Districts 2-4-11 Class 4A playoff race, also lost after its long ride to State College. Conclude from the results what you will. My feeling on the above 0-1 teams didn't change because they lost Week 1. Whitehall and Parkland both held fourth-quarter leads against quality opponents. Both got beat by quarterbacks expected to play on Saturdays next fall. Liberty thought it wouldn't have Boise Ross available for its opener, found out the night before traveling to State College he could play, and featured a lineup with just a couple of returning starters. Freedom's loss was the most surprising, but remember the Patriots spent most of the preseason playing without starting quarterback Brian Uliana, who injured a knee early in their first scrimmage and returned to practice four days before the opener. For all of those reasons, don't write off the Week 1 losers. But don't deny the importance of their Week 2 games, either. No team looking to snag a spot in the Districts 2-4-11 Class 4A field this season wants to start off 0-2. That holds especially true for teams in the LVC, which offers the most top-to-bottom competition for programs that funnel into the Districts 2-4-11 4A bracket. Whitehall finished 7-3 in the regular season a year ago and found itself a whisker away from qualifying for districts. So even in the wake of the Zephyrs' disappointing loss at Spring-Ford — they surrendered 18 unanswered points in the fourth quarter — they talked about the need to both improve in practice this week and put the loss behind them. Whitehall will host Liberty this week in the one LVC matchup guaranteed to leave the loser at 0-2.