Last season, Emmaus downed Northampton during the regular season only to have the Konkrete Kids come back and knock them out of the district tournament.

This season, it was Northampton picking up the regular season win by a 42-23 score last week. The night's highlight was senior Zach Valley picking up his 100th career win when he needed just 1:20 to pin Jake Alcaro at 126 pounds.

Ironically, Valley's historic win came on Alumni Night at Emmaus High School when the team saluted former wrestler Taylor Brown, the school's only All-American wrestler. The premeet ceremony held some significance for Valley, who thought about how one day he may be the one coming back to Northampton to be honored.

"I definitely got that feeling. It was cool having someone like that here and I have the ability to do some of the same things as him and it's a good feeling just to know that can happen one day," said Valley.

Coach Seth Lisa arrived at Northampton as an assistant coach just in time to get to see all four years of Valley's high school career and has been impressed with the hard work that Valley has given to the sport.

"I'm very, very proud of Zach. My first year as an assistant at Northampton was Zach's freshman year, so I've been lucky enough to watch all four years of this and he is a product of hard work and dedication to the sport," Lisa explained. "He wrestles all year round, he trains hard, he's a leader on this team and I'm very happy that he got rewarded with this 100th win."

When Valley looked back over his career, he admitted that early on there were a lot of tough times, but he was able to overcome them by remaining dedicated to the sport. That dedication not only enabled Valley to reach the 100 win plateau, but drew the attention of colleges, including Bucknell University where Valley will continue his wrestling career.

"I never really did much as far as winning a lot of tournaments or anything in middle school, but as I started to wrestle more and got into high school, I started to get better," remembers Valley. "My freshman year, I had a rocky start to my career, but then I built off it and now I'm at 100 wins and will be going for my third state medal; hopefully, it's gold. I'm going to do everything in my power to make it gold and keep working to better myself.

"I got recruited as a 133/141-pounder. I'm actually taking summer classes there, so I'll leave June 9th and start there and start practicing there and hopefully, I can break the line-up freshman year. That would be nice."

Valley visited a number of colleges, but found that there was just something about Bucknell University that drew him to committing to being a Bison for his college career. Part of the draw was a wrestling program that Valley believes will help him to continue to develop.

"It was just a feeling. I was visiting some colleges and when I went to Bucknell, I just knew that was where I wanted to spend four-plus years. They just got a new assistant coach, Jarrod Garnett, an All-American from Virginia Tech and he was a great wrestler. Only God knows how much better of a wrestler he can make me. It's a great atmosphere and a great team with a lot of great people to be around," said Valley.

As for Northampton's win over Emmaus, Lisa credited his wrestlers for putting in the hard work they've needed to pick up some key wins this season as the program looks to head back to districts.

"It's a really important win for us," admitted Lisa. "We wrestled Freedom [last night] and that was two evenly matched teams and we won the coin flip and were able to pair up the matches that we wanted to and the guys performed, they did their jobs. Against Emmaus, it just kind of seemed like our guys came out and wrestled harder."