Michael McDaniel was a thorn in the side of Lehighton all night, and on both sides of the ball. The senior tailback/cornerback rushed for 251 yards on 31 carries and four touchdowns on offense and threw in a 73-yard fumble return on defense as Bethlehem Catholic (10-1) earned a berth to a second straight District 11 Class 3A final with a resounding 55-18 win at Bethlehem Area School District stadium.

The Indians had trouble keeping up with McDaniel and a high-powered, up-tempo Becahi offense that racked up 463 yards of offense and registered its fifth performance of 52 points or more. McDaniel could have had an even bigger night, but he had three touchdown runs of 39 yards or more all wiped out by holding penalties.

The number one seed Golden Hawks (10-1) will now face third seeded Saucon Valley (10-1) Saturday night at BASD in the district final for the right to move onto the PIAA state tournament.

"We had a lot of slow starts this season, so we wanted to come out and play with urgency from the beginning," McDaniel said. "We wanted to play to win and not let [Lehighton] hang around too much. Those penalties were frustrating, but you just keep playing."

Lehighton did not hang around for too long.

Becahi opened the scoring on the first drive of the game, which only took four plays, a 68-yard pass from Julian Spigner to Freddie Simmons, and Lehighton was quickly down 7-0. But just 12 seconds later, Tyler Crum ran back the ensuing kickoff 89 yards for a score to pull the Indians to within 7-6 after the extra point was missed.

But after that score, that was the closest the Indians would get the rest of the game. It was 27-6 at halftime.

Spigner and Simmons also had productive nights of their own for the Golden Hawks. Spigner completed 13 of 17 passes for 207 yards and three touchdowns, all to Simmons, who had nine catches for 164 yards to go along with the three scores.

"In the first half, I thought we played a real clean game," said head coach Joe Henrich. "In the second half, it got a little ugly at times. But we played with more emotion than we've played with in awhile and we were more physical than we've been. I feel good with where we're at as a team right now."

Becahi put the game away late with 21 fourth quarter points. And defensively, the Golden Hawks did not give the Indians any room for a comeback.

They only allowed just 265 yards of offense and got interceptions from Darius Aldridge and Joe Smith, along with the fumble recovery by McDaniel.

The senior running back, however, was the star of the night with his performance, but he was quick to give credit to his teammates.

"We had a lot of good blocking by the line on the perimeter," he said. "Without that blocking, there's not much you can do."