When all was said and done for the Northwestern football team, it wasn’t quite where it wanted to be at the end of the 2016 football season.

The Tigers’ hopes of making districts were already gone coming into the season finale against Catasauqua, but with a 48-20 win, they not only salvaged a .500 season, but found themselves set to play Blue Mountain for the Eastern Conference Championship next week.

“I’m glad that these kids, especially the seniors, get to play in a championship football game,” said Northwestern head coach Josh Snyder. “We’ve had some rough spots, but they played a great game tonight. They didn’t hang their heads, and I think they’re excited about playing next week.”

It was another big night for Trevor Cunningham, who rewrote a big chunk of the Northwestern record book. The senior receiver, who has seen time at running back the past couple of weeks because of injuries, scored four touchdowns, two on runs and two on catches.

His 317 yards of total offense on the night broke the single game record set by running back Harry Hall and coach Snyder, who had been tied with 313 yards.

Cunningham’s 170 receiving yards made him the first Northwestern player to go over the 1,000-yard mark in receiving, finishing the regular season with 1,044. He is also one catch shy of reaching Cam Richardson’s record of 47 catches in a season set in 2014.

Eighty-six of Cunningham’s receiving yards against Catty came on one play, which put Northwestern up 6-0 in the first quarter on what was the longest pass play from scrimmage in the school’s history.

Cunningham is just the second player in Tigers history to go over 100 yards in both receiving and rushing in a single game. The last time that happened was when Jake Bennett accomplished the feat back in 2007.

“It’s been great getting to play at a couple different spots the past couple of weeks,” said Cunningham. “We’ve been pretty banged up, so we’ve all just had to do whatever we can to pitch in.”

Of course, Cunningham’s big night for receiving wouldn’t have been possible without a big game from freshman quarterback Deven Bollinger, who now holds the school record for completions in a season with 102.

Bollinger is still six attempts shy of the school record, meaning that he’s completing a high number of passes. He threw for 233 yards against Catty, pushing his single-season record even higher to 1,730 yards.

“Our line kind of took it personally that we haven’t had a lot of big running games, because at Northwestern, it’s just kind of assumed that we’ll be able to run the ball,” said Snyder. “We challenged them this week to be physical and open things up for our backs and they really responded.

“We have an offense that can strike pretty quickly, but we put together a couple drives [against Catty] where we just ate up yards here and there and kept moving the chains and that was nice to see. A lot of that comes back to our offensive line.”

Northwestern was hampered by injuries, with Phillip Dangello missing his second game with a knee injury, while Tyler Foster (dislocated shoulder) missed his first game of the season. Anthony Colucci was also out of the lineup with an injury for Northwestern.

The good news for teh Tigers was that Caleb Clymer, who was limited to playing just defensively last week, returned to play both sides of the ball against Catasauqua, and sophomore running back Tyler Lobach stepped up to rush for 81 yards on 17 carries for Northwestern.

Northwestern looks for its second Eastern Conference championship in four years when it travels to Schuylkill Haven to play Blue Mountain this week.

The Tigers’ last EC championship came back in 2013. Back then, there were two games to win to become champions, but this year’s shift of classifications has limited the EC to a one-game playoff, with the winner being crowned champion.