The Northampton golf team is the defending District 11 team champions.

With that accolade comes honor and also a big target on their back for this season. Unfortunately for the Konkrete Kids, some of the other Lehigh Valley Conference elite hit that target right on the mark.

Back on August 20 Northampton played Emmaus in a tri-match where Emmaus was looking for revenge after losing to the K-Kids by just one stroke in districts last year. This time around, Northampton (382) came up a bit short to the Green Hornets (372) as Emmaus's Carlos Fullerton tied the course record at Riverview Country Club.

Two weeks later Northampton teed it up against the Parkland Trojans at their home course, Iron Lakes in Schnecksville, PA. Once again ten strokes was the difference and the K-Kids were on the losing side of a 388-398 final tally.

Head coach Brian Davies knew that the Emmaus match was going to be emotionally charged because of the way that the district tournament finished last fall, but the Parkland match was a tough loss as Northampton lost its ability to control its own destiny.

"Iron Lakes is a pretty easy course and it was a tough loss because it hurt us a lot," admitted Davies in a phone interview Monday night. "Now that we can no longer decide where we end up [in terms of districts], it is tough. We need to win out and have a few other things happen. We just hope that we can sneak in the back door for districts."

At the time of print, Northampton owned a 6-2 mark overall and a 4-2 record in the LVC. Moving forward Davies sees Parkland, Emmaus, Central Catholic and Bethlehem Catholic as schools with "competitive squads." Luckily for Northampton those teams are in the rearview mirror for now as they wrap-up the season with Whitehall (Sept 12.), Pocono Mountain West (Sept. 17) and Nazareth (Sept. 20) before seeing those elite again at the league tournament on September 23.

Davies knows that this team's success is backed by two superb golfers and he is hoping that they can continue that into the playoffs this year. They are a pair of seniors in Kevin Kunkle and Tyler Smith, both of whom have been playing since their freshman year. Davies has nothing, but praise for them.

"They both have a lot of experience on the golf course. They both play AJGA events all throughout the summer and they are really serious about golf. They are fielding offers from different schools for post-secondary golf careers and they definitely will be continuing their careers after Northampton."

Moving forward this season Davies is trying to keep his golfers focused and he has implemented a "10-second rule." It states that each golfer is only allowed to be mad about a bad shot for 10 seconds then they must move on. Davies hopes they can move on and hit their own target which is to repeat as district champions.