Things may have started slow for Northampton in their EPC championship day match against East Stroudsburg South last Saturday, but the K-Kids picked it up to close things out strong en route to a 48-18 victory at Easton Area Middle School.

The victory cemented a fifth-place finish for Northampton in the EPC, as they now gear up for Thursday’s opening round of the District 11 dual meet tournament.

Northampton (12-3) enters the tournament as the fourth seed and will host either fifth-seeded Stroudsburg (16-4) or twelfth-seeded Whitehall (10-7) at 7:30 p.m.

Should the Kids win on Thursday night, they’ll likely meet Bethlehem Catholic on Saturday morning in the 3A semifinals slated for 10:45 a.m. at Freedom.

Head coach Seth Lisa was happy how his team responded to the Cavaliers on Saturday after dropping three of the opening five bouts of the match. Northampton went on to win seven of the final nine bouts.

“Drew 170 to start the bout and we knew they [ESS] had some good talent up top and it was going the wrong way to start,” said Lisa. “We lost 170, lost at 182 and we were losing at 195, but were able to get a big fall at 195 and then got another from our heavyweight. We were comfortable coming back to our light weights. Things went according to plan once we got to 106.”

Gunner Wagner scored a 7-0 decision over Dawson Miller at 106 to push Northampton’s lead to 15-10 and the Kids took off from there.

Same Hanley (113), Logan Ninos (120), Devon Britton (138) and Cole Kleppinger (152) closed out the match with falls, while Jagger Condomotti (126) earned a 17-1 technical fall and Michael Kistler (145) added an 11-3 major decision in the Kids run to finish things out.

Jayden Bortz (195) and Hunter Werkhesier (HWT) also had falls in the match.

“This is good for us to get a lot of points on the board because South is a good team,” said Lisa. “It’ll be an interesting match on Thursday, but I think the kids have confidence heading into duals and we’ll see what we can do next weekend.”