The Northampton boys basketball team closed out the 2025 portion of their schedule with a 61-37 thrashing of Bethlehem Catholic Saturday afternoon in Pete Schneider Gymnasium.

However, at the half the K-Kids only led 29-26 and when the Golden Hawks made the first basket of the third quarter, the lead was cut to a single point.

From there, Northampton went on a 17-0 run that spanned the remainder of the third quarter and the first three minutes of the fourth. A Becahi trey broke the string that wound up as 26-3 in less than 10 minutes of game time.

Brady Simock put an exclamation mark on the win with a crowd-pleasing dunk with three minutes left in the contest.

Head coach Matt Scholl recalled the moment with a smile, “Brady Simock, what a heck of a dunk that was. He throws them down in practice occasionally. It’s not a 100% guarantee, so when I saw him sprinting out, I thought, ‘Go for it.’ He was going for it no matter what.”

The K-Kids were paced by Noah Walakovits, who had 18 points on a very efficient 7 of 8 shooting from the floor including a pair of 3-pointers.

The senior, who is on pace to add his name to the list of Northampton career 1,000-point scorers, described his offensive mindset, “I mean, scoring’s great, but I feel like I’m more of a team player looking to pass first and get my guys involved. Because when it comes down to it in a tight game, if it’s just me scoring, then it doesn’t really help us if I’m getting guarded tight. I want to get the other guys some confidence and get them going too.”

The Kids enter the winter break with a record of 8-1 overall and 6-1 in the EPC with their only loss being a 5-point setback at defending 6A district champion Parkland.

The team is on guard against suffering through a second half lull like last season where they came into January at 7-2, only to lose 5 of their next 6 games.

Guard Leo Regec explained the approach the veteran group is going to take in 2026, “We’ve just got to listen to the coaches and just take everything seriously. We have to do the things we need to do to improve. I feel like if we can do the little things, we can stay consistent going forward.”

Northampton 17-12-9-23 61

Becahi 13-13-2-9 37

Northampton scoring: Walakovits 18, Regec 11, Simock 10, Raphun 7, Raysley 7, Sollars 4, Walter 4