You can say that Freedom’s football team has found their way. The Pates have settled into the midpoint of the season with two straight impressive wins to shake off a 1-2 start.

After knocking off Central Catholic 32-14 last Saturday, Freedom moved to 3-2 on the year and feeling good about themselves.

“There’s definitely a different mood around this team now,” said head coach Jason Roeder. “When you start to put wins together and get momentum, it’s something you hope to keep building on.”

Building is what the Pates have been doing every week and the area of play where Roeder and the staff has seen the biggest improvement is up front on the offensive line.

The Pates put that on display last week against the Vikings (3-2), running the ball 39 times for 258 yards, led by Jalen Fletcher’s 167 yards and four score effort.

After carrying the ball 26 times through the first three games of the season, Fletcher has now had 26 carries in each of their last two wins over Nazareth and Central for a total of 361 yards and six touchdowns.

“I think the biggest area of improvement has been with our line,” Roeder said. “Every year is a new team with different players and we as a staff are still trying to figure things out with our rotations, but the guys up front have really done a great job improving. We usually try and take what the defense gives us every week, but we’ve had a lot of success running the ball the last two weeks.”

Freedom now gets a winless Allen team on Friday night to give them some reprieve from the difficult EPC South schedule. Roeder just hopes his group doesn’t take their foot off the pedal with a showdown against the Canaries on the horizon.

“When you’re moving in the right direction, you want to keep doing things that keep you going there,” he said. “We need to show up at practice and put in the same amount of work this week, that we’ve been doing all season. That’s what we expect out of everyone.”

Bethlehem Catholic dropped to 3-2 following a 42-12 thumping by Emmaus last week. The Hawks could only muster 151 yards of total offense, with only 36 passing yards from quarterback Luke Thomas. The Hawks now face a massive showdown on Saturday at 3 p.m. with Northampton (5-0) coming to BASD Stadium.

The K-Kids knocked off Becahi 17-14 last year and Becahi could certainly use a win in this revenge matchup.

Liberty (1-4) dropped a 42-0 result to Nazareth last week for their most lopsided defeat of the season. The Blue Eagles got three touchdown passes from Sonny Sasso and took a 27-0 lead into halftime. Mason Kuehner then took the second half kickoff 90 yards for a score to put the game into the mercy rule.

Liberty will try to lick their wounds this Friday at home with a showdown against East Stroudsburg South (3-2).