It was a dream start to the season for Bethlehem Catholic’s football team, but the last three weeks have been the opposite of what they enjoyed during a 5-0 start.

The Golden Hawks dropped their third straight game last week, falling to Parkland 40-3 in Orefield.

It also marked the third straight game the Hawks haven’t been able to find the end zone, as Jeremy Fyrer’s 33-yard field goal in the fourth quarter last week have been the only points the team has scored in the past 12 quarters.

Head coach Tyler Ward knows it’s been a frustrating stretch of losses the past three weeks, but also knows things are correctable.

“Biggest part of it is just missed opportunities and those are easy things to correct,” said Ward of the offensive woes lately. “Last three weeks it’s a lot of little things that are popping up. We’ve been real close and feel like we should have won two of these games. We just got behind too quick against Parkland and put ourselves in a bad situation.”

Parkland (8-0), the second ranked 6A team in the state, has made a habit of jumping out to big leads this season on their opponents. They did the same against the Hawks by grabbing a 33-0 halftime lead before putting things into mercy-rule following a 13-yard touchdown pass by Luke Spang in the third quarter.

Spang threw for 224 yards and three touchdowns last week, while Becahi’s Cayden Vassa struggled under center, completing 4-of-21 passes for 70 yards and an interception. Vassa only completed four passes last week against Freedom and Ward knows it’s only a matter of time for the passing game to find their stride again.

“Teams are doing a good job of loading up the box and keying on Carter Vassa (wide receiver),” said Ward. “We’re shooting ourselves in the foot, by missing some easy throws and bad blocks, but everything is correctable. Competition we’ve played the last three weeks has been really good. We just want to get our edge back.”

That will be difficult this week as the schedule doesn’t let up with a road trip to Nazareth (7-1) on Friday night. They close out the regular season at Central Catholic (6-2) the following week, finishing the regular season against the top three teams in the EPC.

Ward just wants his group to keep fighting and not hang their heads amid the adversity they’re going through.

“We have young kids that keep learning and we’re going to keep getting better,” he said. “Still have a lot of bright things coming up and our goals are still in front of us. The biggest thing is you can’t overreact. Being able to show them on film that it’s little issues that need to be fixed has been important. We’re on the cusp of a good team reaching to be great.”

Liberty (2-6) lost their sixth straight game of the season last week, falling to Emmaus 21-6.

The Green Hornets (5-3) ran for 192 yards on the night, led by Riley Giuffre’s 140 yards and a score. Liberty was without their top offensive player, wide receiver Jake Pukszyn, who got hurt during practice earlier in the week and was pulled from the game early. Caden Vermuelen completed 14-of-28 passes for 180 yards on the night, connecting with Anthony Vega on five catches for 90 yards, including a six-yard score in the fourth quarter to pull the game within 14-6 with 10:57 left to play.

Emmaus stole any momentum back on their next play from scrimmage when Giuffre ripped off a 70-yard touchdown run to put the Hornets back ahead by two scores.

The Hurricanes now get ready for a Thursday showdown at BASD Stadium against Whitehall (4-4) at 6 p.m.