It was a victory that granted relief and brought a bevy of goods with it following last week's dramatic Bethlehem Catholic win over Freedom.

The Hawks 20-16 come back win snapped a three-game slide, but also clinched them a spot in the District 11 3A postseason.

Last, but not least, the win also solidified the Christmas City championship for the Hawks, as it was the first time since 2006 that Becahi has taken the crown.

Freddie Simmons turned a quiet night into a roar, when he took a 15-yard pass by the sideline and weaved his way around Patriot defenders for the game winning score with 49 seconds left.

Simmons kept the drive alive after hauling in a 40-yard bomb from quarterback Julian Spigner earlier to set up the Hawks at the Freedom 31 yard line.

"My blockers set me up real nice and I just tried to make a play," said Simmons of his game-winning TD. "Part of its luck, but it was a big play. We just kept our heads up on that last drive. We had possession and we knew we could score. We trailed Liberty in the fourth quarter and came back to win too."

The win appears to solidify Becahi (5-4, 4-4) as the second seed in the district playoffs, as current top-seed Southern Lehigh (8-1) leads the Hawks in the point standings by a 0.718076 to 0.681193 margin.

But as Becahi appeared to be on life support when they took over from their own 27 with 4:40 to play, the Simmons touchdown lifted a weight off their shoulders following three straight defeats.

"It is a big relief because it's been a tough couple weeks for us," said head coach Joe Henrich. "Our guys understood that we needed to straighten some things out and we still made a lot of mistakes. But we've been down and we've struggled, but we won one game last year, so all of this is huge for this program."

And the rebuild of the Becahi program took another step last week at the expense of Freedom (2-7, 2-6), who have seen improvements in the second half of the season, but saw Friday night turn into a cold reality of what football can do to teams on the losing end.

"It's a tough pill to swallow," said Pates head coach Jason Roeder. "As bad as we feel about what happened, we still need to move forward and think about Liberty."

Becahi has their sights set on their regular season finale at home against Central (2-7) Friday before moving onto district play.

But winning the city championship may have been just as important for a program that has failed to establish its own identity in the city for the better part of seven years.

"Coming from the past couple years where we were 1-9 last season, this is huge," said Simmons on winning the city championship."

Making it to districts is pretty big for our program."