Northampton and Easton have one of the fiercest wrestling rivals dating back decades as both schools have won multiple state championships. However, in recent years the Konkrete Kids have owned the Rovers, having last lost to them in 2015.

This year’s Easton squad is the best that they have had in quite a while, having already beaten Nazareth and Bethlehem Catholic. Northampton traveled to the 25th Street Gymnasium last Saturday to try to pull the upset and extend the streak.

The K-Kids got off to a good start with Trey Wagner scoring a 22-6 tech fall at 133 and Austin Noe posting a first period pin at 145 to put the team up 11-8 after 4 bouts.

However, Easton swept weight classes 152 through 215 to take a 30-11 lead and were never seriously at risk of losing the dual meet as they won 36-21.

Head coach Joe Provini assessed the performance, “I thought we wrestled hard. They’re a really good team, they’ve proved it all year long. You saw it in a couple of matches, 8-point major decisions. We could have saved points there but we didn’t. Overall, there’s a chance we’re going to wrestle them next week, so we weren’t going to do a whole lot of maneuvering. If you looked at it on paper, the outcome was about what it should have been. We’ve got a week to close the gap and hopefully get another shot at it.”

Northampton wrestlers did pick up three more individual wins on the night.

Gavin Grell took a 7-4 decision at heavyweight in a bout that got the crowd riled up as both wrestlers tumbled off the Resilite on a couple of occasions.

Gabe Ballard continued his stellar freshman campaign with a 12-3 major decision over Nick Salamone at 114. The Easton sophomore was a seventh-place state medalist at 107 last year. He has 3 losses this season, all to Ballard and all by increasing margins, 8-6, 8-2, 12-3.

Ryan Marano made a second period takedown stand up for a 3-2 decision against Ethan Krazer at 121.

Next up for the K-Kids are the District XI 3A team duals on Saturday at Freedom High School. While the Kids are in the field as one of the top 8 teams by power rating, the seeding of those teams will be decided by a committee on Thursday. This figures to benefit Northampton because they are currently seventh in the power ratings, but are clearly better than numbers 5 and 6, Pottsville and Liberty.

An intriguing possibility would be a quarterfinal matchup with Whitehall. The Zephyrs’ only 2 losses are to Nazareth and Bethlehem Catholic and they are currently fourth in the power rating. Since the two Cement Belt rivals did not wrestle in the regular season, it would offer the most compelling first round contest with the presumptive top 3 seeds, Easton, Becahi, and Nazareth projected to reach the semifinals without being seriously threatened.

The girls’ team will see their next action at the inaugural EPC Girls Wrestling Invitational on Tuesday at Stroudsburg.