Teams start to learn more about themselves as a season goes on. That is certainly the case for the Northwestern Lehigh football team, which romped its way to a 48-0 win over Pen Argyl in week four of the season.

After struggling to score early in games this season, the Tigers put up 15 first-quarter points and held a 28-0 lead at the half. An inexperienced receiving corps had not gotten off to a fast start, but it stepped up against the Green Knights (1-3) to give the offense another dimension.

“We have some talent, but they need to gain more varsity experience and they are doing that as the season goes along,” said Snyder. “We set up some pretty basic routes and are slowly giving them more to chew on and they stepped up tonight.”

Juniors Devon Hildebrand and Dalton Clymer pulled in a combined six catches for 58 yards and senior Austin Sosnovik pulled in one catch for 10 yards.

The big pass play of the night went to freshman Mason Bollinger when he scored on a 26-yard pass from Cade Christopher to put the Tigers up 15-0 midway through the first quarter.

The strong ground game that Northwestern Lehigh (3-1) has shown all season was on display with Christopher (110 yards) and Clymer (89 yards) picking up the bulk of the yardage.

Clymer had two easy touchdown runs, the first on the opening drive on a 1-yard run and the second opened the scoring in the second quarter when he plowed through the line for a 2-yard TD run, making it 21-0.

Christopher added a 9-yard touchdown jaunt and then connected with Clymer on a 10-yard pass play to put the Tigers up 35-0 on their opening drive of the third quarter.

Late in the game, sophomore Eli Zimmerman finished up a nice, quick drive with the game well in hand when he went 3-yards for the score that put the Tigers up 41-0 and Kian Osborne’s extra point made it 42-0.

The drive was satisfying for Zimmerman because on the second play of the drive, he was literally body slammed to the ground by Pen Argyl’s Damian Tyminski, who outweighs the sophomore back by 80 pounds. On the next play, Zimmerman ran for 16 yards and walked back to the huddle with a nod toward Tyminski. On the drive, Zimmerman ran on five straight plays and picked up all 37 yards of his rushing yards.

“We were able to get some of the younger guys a chance to play and they really stepped up,” said Snyder. “We have a strong group of freshman and sophomores who have shown us that they want to play and they have the talent to play. We had some opportunities tonight and they came through.”

The final score of the night came when sophomore Josh Wambold ran 11 yards to put Northwestern Lehigh up 48-0.

The offense has been so good that it has been able to compensate for the injury to punter Seth Kern, who has been out with a broken thumb suffered in the loss to Northern Lehigh in week two. Since his injury, the Tigers have not had to punt the ball after punting it five times in the first two games.

The Tigers’ defense has been strong all season and they have now allowed just three points in their last two games. On the season they have held opponents to 59 points, just under 15 per game.

“We take a lot of pride in holding teams down,” said senior Sam Mauro, who had a key tip on a pass play in the game. “We have worked really hard and we communicate well as a unit. I think football is the ultimate team game and you have to have that communication and really work well together and we have done that.”

Northwestern held Pen Argyl’s tandem of Rissmiller and Tyminski to just one connection for four yards on the night. Coming into the game, Tyminski was averaging nine catches per game for an average of 124 yards. Rissmiller averaged 216 yards passing per game and finished the night with just 38 yards.

The Tigers saluted the Pennsylvania Army National Guard by wearing special camouflage style uniforms with Pennsylvania on the back. After the win, the team posed for photos with two members of the Guard who were on hand for the game.