Northampton head coach Coy Stampone clearly understands the roller coaster ride of playing in the East Penn Conference.

Within two weeks, he watched his team gain momentum with three consecutive wins – including capturing the Salisbury tournament – to a quick descent with a pair of seemingly lopsided losses to Parkland, Allen, and Phillipsburg.

As a result, the Konkrete Kids began this week with an overall 3-6 mark, having a busy four-game slate. At the beginning of last week, the Kids were missing two starters from their lineup.

“We played some very good teams in Parkland and Allen,” said Stampone. “We were down by seven at one point against Allen and later down by five before they went on a 10-0 run.

“We had a terrible second quarter at Phillipsburg in which we were outscored, 20-4. But we outscored them the rest of the way. Overall, we did miss some opportunities. Your fate can easily turn in this conference. We had a run going from the Salisbury tournament and then we ran into some very good teams and made some mistakes.”

The Kids began this week against Whitehall Tuesday, then traveled to Lehighton Wednesday and Stroudsburg Friday before they had a matinee date against Catasauqua Saturday. Stampone took a rather somber approach to the week ahead.

“We’ll have four games in six days,” he said. “Whitehall is playing very well at this point and they go eight deep. It will be a character check for us. We have to go to Lehighton and Stroudsburg, both of whom are playing well. We’d be happy to come out of the week with a 2-2 record, but we obviously want to do better than that and it’s hard to predict.”

Stampone and his club are looking to secure a district berth after they had a late-season collapse last year. They will need to reach the .500 mark overall, but likely would still be rewarded a berth with a lesser mark, as eight teams will advance to the postseason from the 6A Class.

“Our goals all along have been to make districts and also qualify for the league playoffs,” said Stampone. “We know it is a challenging road ahead as we’re playing at least three games a week and the season is over in early February.

“There are eight teams going from our district and you don’t have to have a winning record to get into the playoffs. The guys like playing games all the time, but we coaches welcome the time to prepare for teams.

“We know it can be a tough road ahead, but we are ready for it.”