The Northampton football team trailed East Stroudsburg South from the 6:16 mark of the first quarter until the clock read all zeros in the fourth, but as the final tick went off the clock, Aaron Gutkowski’s 18-yard field goal sailed between the uprights to give the Konkrete Kids a 24-21 victory over their one-time EPC North rival.

Head coach John Toman explained the sluggish first half performance, “We played with no emotion. We came off a big win last week. We have Parkland ahead. I told the kids all week long, ‘They’re a good football team.’ We know coach Walters always does a good job of preparing. There was the dedication of the field (to late head coach Ed Christian Jr). We had to get on a bus and drive for an hour. All of those things kind of stack up and as coach you think, ‘This is kind of a bad spot for us as a team.’”

“And in the first half, that’s what happened. We came out flat as can be. No one was running around. We were hoping someone made a tackle. We just didn’t play good football in the first half. In the second half, we played with emotion, and I think we wore them down a little bit. They got tired and we were able to go right at them in the second half,” he continued.

Special teams carried the day. In addition to the game-winner, Gutkowski made two other field goals, a 38-yarder to open the scoring to cap the Kids’ first drive and a 35-yarder that doinked off the crossbar to get Northampton within 14-6 right before halftime.

Zeke Spencer set up the first drive with a 59-yard return of the opening kickoff and Zander Rickert matched it in the second half to set up the Kids’ first TD.

Offensively, the Cavaliers outgained the K-Kids 369 to 277 for the game and led 21-6 after scoring a touchdown on the opening drive of the second half.

The Northampton defense made two keys stops. In the first half, with South leading 14-3, the Kids forced a turnover on downs after the Cavaliers drove inside in the 10. In the second half, South had just gained a first down near midfield with 2:32 left in the game when Joey High pounced on a fumble to set up the K-Kids’ winning drive.

High also scored Northampton’s final touchdown on a nice catch of a beautiful 41-yard pass from Gavin Taff who was rolling left and throwing across his body.

Billy Stuhldreher led the Kids’ offense with 111 yards rushing. He scored Northampton’s first touchdown, and also converted the key 2-point play after High’s touchdown to tie the game at 21.

Aiden Hess emerged as running threat out of the wildcat formation, much like AJ Slivka was last year. Hess toted the ball 12 times for 101 yards and really jump started the Northampton offense at the end of first half.

The Kids are going to need all of the offensive threats they can muster when Parkland comes to Al Erdosy Stadium on Friday. The Trojans fell to Freedom 30-13 last week. Given that Northampton was free to schedule any opponent in this third game of the year, it might have been a surprise that they elected to take on one of the elite programs in the Lehigh Valley.

Toman explained the reasoning, “Three years in a row we’ve lost to the district champion, Freedom, Parkland, and then Nazareth. If we’re going to beat ‘em, we’ve got to play them. I was looking to get either Parkland or Emmaus on there because we already had Freedom and Nazareth.”