Parkland Press

There was some hype heading into the showdown between the Parkland and Central Catholic football teams last weekend. Both teams were coming off convincing wins in week one of the regular season, and both featured strong running games.

The two teams have not faced one another the last two years because the Vikings were in the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference North Division before returning to the South Division in 2018.

There were many new faces all across the field and on both sides of the ball for the Parkland football team last Friday night in its home opener at Parkland School District Stadium.

But just as they’ve done the last six seasons, the Trojans took care of business and played better football than their opposition. They used a 28-point third quarter to take full advantage of the game and dominate Northampton 41-0 in the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference opening weekend for both teams.

For the first time in more than two seasons, the Parkland football team will take on Allentown Central Catholic in an Eastern Pennsylvania Conference division game, as the Vikings return to the South Division after spending the past two years in the EPC North.

Both Parkland and Central are coming off victories on opening weekend. The Trojans shutout Northampton 41-0 at home and the Vikings took care of Stroudsburg on the road 38-14, both games were against EPC North Division teams.

Rising senior Shelby Staib of Parkland High School has a lot of confidence and momentum heading into her final year as a Trojan student-athlete.

She capped off her junior campaign with her first ever district championship in the javelin at the District 11 meet back in May, a few weeks after winning gold at the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference meet.

When it comes to winning, 2018 Parkland High School graduate Jake Nimeh did a lot of it. He never even experienced a loss while playing in the Lehigh Valley Scholastic Ice Hockey League.

The Trojans accumulated a total of 68 wins and two ties with no losses, including four league titles and two appearances in the state quarterfinals during his four year career.

Nimeh was also on the golf team, and was the top overall performer on the team at the District 11 Class 3A tournament last fall.

First-year Parkland girls basketball coach Ed Ohlson is a familiar name to Lehigh Valley basketball fans, and Parkland fans in general. His son Eddie played for the Trojans in the early 2000s and is now an assistant coach on the boys team.

Ed, who was part of Rich Fatzinger’s boys staff at Parkland, was also a longtime area boys coach for several different schools before making the switch to the girls side.

Last weekend Parkland competed in the A-Town Throwdown Divaz Challenge, which was separate and played a week after the boys tournament for the first time.

The previously dubbed Sportsfest basketball tournament, which now goes by the name of A-town Throwdown tournament, has been kind to the Parkland boys basketball program recently. Within the past decade, the Trojans have celebrated multiple tournament titles on the macadam courts of Cedar Beach in Allentown.

To make it through a weekend of multiple games a day in the heat, and sometimes not having key players because of other commitments, it can be difficult to record wins against a quality field each year.

Every summer the goal for the Parkland boys basketball team is to get better as a team, but also to reach the final day of the marquee summer tournaments.

It’s been a mixed bag thus far this summer for the Trojans, who lost a recent summer league game to rival Whitehall before having a week off to prepare for the first summer tournament.

Last weekend at the Cedar Beach Bash at the Beach Tournament, Parkland found some success, winning two of its first three games, before falling Sunday in the four-day, 40-team, double-elimination style tournament.

With the school year all but wrapped up, boys varsity summer league basketball is beginning to heat up.

This weekend begins the first of two major summer basketball tournaments, with the Cedar Beach Showcase, otherwise known as the Bash at the Beach, opening up its double-elimination style format tomorrow.

But before teams had one week to prepare for the grind of playing multiple games each day in the heat, the Cedar Beach Summer League wrapped up its first half of the regular season last Thursday.

The Parkland baseball team did its part at the plate recording hits, but it did not score enough runs as it fell to Freedom 2-1 last Wednesday evening in the District 11 Class 6A championship game at Lehigh University’s J. David Walker Field.

The top-seeded Trojans (21-4 overall) tallied five hits throughout the course of the game, outhitting the seventh-seeded Patriots (16-9) 5-4. But it just came down to Freedom crossing the plate one more time than Parkland.