Bethlehem Catholic and Parkland tussled for a half of football in Orefield last Friday night, but the Trojans eventually turned a close contest into a blowout.

Parkland led 14-7 at halftime, but scored 21 unanswered points in the second half to pull away and push themselves to 6-1 on the season and atop the District 11 6A power rankings.

The Trojans racked up 300 yards of total offense, including 237 yards on the ground to spearhead the night, but it was their defense that changed the game to start the second half to blow open the game.

After trailing 14-0 in the first half, Becahi got a shot of life when the Trojans fumbled a punt with 57 seconds left at their own 13 yard line. Jared Richardson then threw a 26-yard touchdown to Eric Wert to cut the lead in half and give the Hawks a boost of confidence, as they would start on offense to begin the second half.

The Hawks (2-5) opened the second half and drove to the Parkland 31 yard line before the Trojans shut down any opportunity of giving Becahi anymore momentum, when they sacked Richardson for a 15-yard loss to open a fresh set of downs to derail the drive.

Becahi was forced to punt and Parkland capitalized with a 12-play, 79-yard drive, capped by Luke Spang’s 15-yard TD run to make it 21-7 with 3:10 left in third period.

After that, Becahi never got back on track offensively, as Parkland tacked on a pair of 10-yard TD runs by Dahlir Adams and Nakhi Bullock in the fourth quarter to pull away.

“Ya, we definitely missed an opportunity to open the second half,” said Becahi head coach Kyle Haas. “We also missed an opportunity with our first drive of the game. We’ve just been sporadic offensively. Sometimes we have good drives and then other times we have three and outs. It’s both sides of the ball we have to figure out how to be consistent, because hanging with a team like Parkland for a half isn’t good enough for us. We got to figure out ways to make these games going into the fourth quarter.”

With a week off coming into the game because of a COVID cancellation against Easton, Haas felt the team practiced better in the lead up to the contest and played well to open the game. They just couldn’t sustain it.

“For having five days off, I thought we played well in the first half,” said Haas. “It just seemed like they [Parkland] ran the quarterback more in the second half and we didn’t have answer for it. We have to figure out what happened in the second half, fix it and move forward.”

Moving forward means a Saturday showdown with Freedom (6-2) with an opportunity to claim the city championship after knocking off Liberty earlier in the season.

The Hawks are also clinging to hope in the District 11 4A postseason push, as they now sit in sixth place, two spots outside the top four, behind Bangor (5-3) and Wilson (5-3).