Catasauqua Press

The Phantoms continued their up-and-down play this season by splitting two road games over the weekend.

On Friday, they beat Providence 5-4 but followed that up with a 3-2 loss to Springfield the following night. After 16 games, the Phantoms are 9-5-1-1, but are 4-3-1-0 over their last eight games. It’s worth noting that four of those games have been against Springfield (9-4-0-2) and Charlotte (13-3-1-0), who are two of the three teams ahead of the Phantoms in the Atlantic Division. They’ve also played two games against Binghamton (8-7-3-0), who are third in the North Division.

Mike McClarin knows about rivalries.

While he spent part of his college football career at Navy, McClarin was involved in arguably football’s most notable rivalry against Army.

Now, the first-year head coach is experiencing the same kind of intensity closer to home.

McClarin will lead his Roughies squad into Alumni Field Thursday morning for the 96th annual meeting with rival Northampton.

Northampton (7-4) has won the last four contests and has an overall 58-33-4 advantage in the series.

Monday’s Nov. 26 antlered deer hunting season will have up to a million orange clad hunters invading Penn’s Woods in pursuit of a buck. The season runs until Dec. 8 in most areas of the state.

According to Pennsylvania Game Commission, about 45 percent of the season’s buck harvest was taken on the opener last year. But last season, hunters took more deer on the first Saturday of the season — a first in Pennsylvania’s deer-management history. “These really are two of the best times to be deer hunting,” said Chris Rosenberry, PGC deer and elk biologist.

Northampton’s football season can be divided into two seasons.

First, there is the 5-1 start in which the Konkrete Kids posted three consecutive shutouts and averaged 46 points a game after their opening-game loss to Parkland.

Then there are the final five games that saw the Kids drop their final two games of the season to Whitehall and Easton, the latter in their first District 11 playoff appearance since 2003.

On the football field, Brad Panto sees the big picture and deals with his share of challenges.

He understands patience.

Off the field, he will endure one of his biggest challenges when he begins service in the United States Army after graduation.

As a result, the senior is well aware of his team’s plight this season as they end their season against archrival Northampton this week.

“It takes time to turn this around,” Panto said. “You don’t do it over night with new coaches and a new system.

Former Whitehall head football coach Brian Gilbert read the movements of the Giants’ Saquon Barkley who nearly rushed for 4,000 career yards as a Zephyr.

Gilbert also had a good read on Barkley when the rookie ran for a career-high 142 yards and scored three overall touchdowns in his team’s 38-35 victory over Tampa Bay at Met Life Stadium Sunday afternoon.

Wilquon Clemons won’t forget when he won his team’s Most Valuable Player (MVP) award after the Thanksgiving Day game last year.

The then junior running back finished the day with 106 yards on 14 carries.

A year later with the game hours away, Clemons has a melancholy feeling mixed with a sense of reality.

“It’s sad,” said Clemons. It’s hard to realize that this will be my last game. I know I have to play even harder and do even better.

“Since we didn’t make the playoffs, this is our championship game.”

Catasauqua High School’s cheerleaders placed sixth in the Game Day Division of the Colonial League Cheerleading Competition last Wednesday night at Catasauqua High School.

“For our first year in competition, it was a really good experience,” said Catty head coach Mikesha Calhoun, who is assisted by Nikki Treiber. “There is a learning curve for us.”

The Rough Riders just missed placing by five points.

“They hit their stunts really well and their energy was at an all-time high for them,” Calhoun said. “I had to leave and cry.”

Catasauqua’s Amy Huber was ready for her recent powder puff clash with Northampton, but she and her teammates were caught a little off guard.

With the game at Northampton, the host Konkrete Kids instituted a new 7-on-7 format instead of the traditional 11-on-11 among some other changes in the format.

The Roughies battled, but they fell in the high-scoring, 62-44 clash on Nov. 4.

The third part of the big game season kicks off Nov. 17 when the black bear season opens in Pennsylvania for its four-day run.

According to the Pennsylvania Game Commission (PGC), our state has a bear population of around 20,000 over the past three years. And with good mast crops all over, the agency says bears have spread out making them harder to find.