In his 10 years of coaching at Northampton, head coach Coy Stampone always wanted to play a game at Bangor, his alma mater.

The first Saturday of the season, he finally got his wish.

Stampone and the Konkrete Kids actually opened their season with a 52-42 victory over Bangor at Bill Pensyl Gymnasium. The Kids’ originally slated opener against Catasauqua the previous day was postponed when Catty suffered a COVID outbreak.

The veteran coach was Bangor’s leading scorer during the 1976-77 season, as he led his team to the league title. He was inducted into the school’s Hall of Fame in 2018.

“This was the first time I got to check out Bangor’s Wall of Fame since I was inducted,” said Stampone. “It was special seeing my name. It was fun bringing the team there, and a lot of teammates from the 1977 team were in attendance.”

Stampone was surprised with the Kids’ slow start, especially in the first half.

“The game was a typical first game of the year,” he said. “We did some good things, and we did some things that were not so good. Some players had first-game jitters. We knew that Bangor had some returning starters from their district championship team, and they also lost some key players.”

Isaac Harris led the Kids with 27 points, and Cooper King added eight.

“I thought we defended their returning starters well. Keeping a team at 42 points is a good defensive effort, but I thought we could have scored more than 52 points. We shot terribly in the second quarter and only scored three points. We didn’t have the patience on offense in the first quarter.

“Luckily, we made some adjustments at halftime, and we settled down and played a better second half. We were happy with the win, and we cleaned up some things at practice.”