With last Saturday’s 45-32 win over Blue Mountain, the Northampton girls evened their record at 6-6 and matched their win total from the entire 2023-24 campaign.

After a fairly competitive first quarter, from which the K-Kids emerged with a 12-7 lead, the game seemed destined to wind up in Mercy Rule territory.

Northampton forced 9 Eagles’ turnovers in the second quarter and finished the frame on a 10-0 run to take a 26-10 lead into intermission.

The Kids extended that to 35-12 midway through the third quarter. At the end of the period Northampton held a seemingly comfortable 37-16 lead.

However, over the first 6 minutes of the final quarter, Blue Mountain doubled their point total to 32, while the K-Kids offense sputtered. The one-time 23-point lead was down to 8, 40-32.

Northampton’s defense clamped down and shut out the Eagles over the final two minutes and they added 5 points from the charity stripe to ice the game.

Anne Beenders led all scores with 21 points and probably had half a dozen steals. Jenna Raysely scored 12 points. Isabella Pecuch had 8. Abbie Luipersbeck chipped in 3 and Ro Echevarria had 1 of the closing free throws.

The K-Kids did drop their game Tuesday night against Bethlehem Catholic 49-25 to fall a game under .500 and to 2-6 in the EPC. This leaves them needing to win 5 of their final 9 games to qualify for districts with an 11-11 overall record.

Their next four games are all winnable and they probably need to sweep them. On Friday they are at 3-8 Freedom. They host 5-6 Central on Monday followed by a game at 5-6 Whitehall on Tuesday. Next Thursday is the only gimme on the schedule as they play at 2-8 Pocono Mountain East.

“It’s not going to be easy,” stated head coach Jeff Jacksits. “Whitehall’s not bad and Freedom’s not that bad either. They only lost to Central by one the other night. There’s games there to be had, but it’s not going to be easy.”

That stretch is followed by a quartet of games against teams that have beaten the K-Kids by at least 15 points each previous meeting this season: Easton, Liberty, Nazareth, and Becahi.

The regular season finale is a home game against Freedom on February 3.