Northwestern Lehigh broke down film, addressed a few areas in need of improvement after last week’s close call and practiced them to perfection.

Coach Josh Snyder’s Tiger then carried that into Friday night’s Colonial-Schuylkill League game against Lehighton.

It took less than two hours for Northwestern to play stellar and efficient football and leave Lehighton Area School District Stadium feeling good about all facets of its game.

Five players scored a rushing touchdown and Shane Leh threw a pair of TD passes in a 50-0 shutout, the Tigers’ 21st consecutive victory.

“Last week, big plays killed us,” senior Shane Hulmes said of Northwestern’s 34-28 win over Blue Mountain. “We had a lot of mental mistakes. We cleaned it up this week in practice. I think we played a pretty clean game today, held strong.

“As a senior, I’m one of the guys who has to make sure guys are in the right spots, in the right coverages, right blitzes. That’s really on me to make sure there aren’t any mental mistakes. This week in practice, I think the coaches were tough on us to make sure our minds were right. I think we did a really good job of that tonight.”

Northwestern scored on all five of its first-half drives.

After forcing a three-and-out, the Tigers needed only three plays to go 36 yards, the last 30 coming on a third-down touchdown run by Chase Sukanick on a trap play that has chewed up several foes this season.

Another Lehighton three-and-out was followed by another short drive. Brady Zimmerman capped off a six-play, 51-yard series with a 28-yard touchdown run with 5:50 left in the first quarter.

Another three-and-out led to a five-play, 49-yard scoring possession finished off by Bollinger’s 3-yard TD run.

Lehighton’s only sustained drive came on its fourth series. The Indians picked up three first downs and had three Jayse Lawrence completions, but his deep pass into the end zone intended for Kyden Hauser was picked off by Leh.

Five plays and 80 yards later, Northwestern had a 28-0 cushion thanks to Hulmes’ 4-yard scoring run with 8:10 left in the first half.

Lakatosh ran for 107 yards and one TD. Chase Sukanick added 99 more on the ground for Northwestern. Leh completed 15 of 19 passes for 166 yards and two scores as the Tigers racked up 471 yards and allowed just 83, 45 coming on Lehighton’s fourth series of the game.

“[Our passing game] has been unbelievable,” Leh said. “Last week, I think we passed for 240 yards. It’s been rolling. I think the completion percentage was really high tonight. It was nice to get a bunch of guys the football and see what they could do with it.”

Michael Lagowy and Mason Bollinger each had five receptions for Northwestern (5-0). Brady Zimmerman had three more and Hulmes added two more as the Tigers continue to prove they are a versatile offense that is not one dimensional nor predictable.

“[Practice] this week was very focused,” Snyder said. “It’s easy to take for granted some of the things that got you to that particular point. We had over 500 yards offense and kept Blue Mountain to about 220 or so, but the score didn’t indicate that due to bad coverage on punts and kickoffs, due to not taking advantage of some pass plays that we should have finished in the end zone. It resulted in a tight game on the scoreboard.

“But we did a lot of really good things last week, but we were a little bit undisciplined so we were harping on those things.”

Northwestern was disciplined and determined Friday night to deliver a message to itself that it is capable doing what it did on both sides of the ball against a good team in Lehighton (2-3).

Leh’s 3-yard TD pass to Bollinger with 1:32 left in the first put the Tigers up 35-0.

They scored on the third play of the fourth quarter on Leh’s 15-yard TD pass to Lagowy, then got a 1-yard Jesse Yenser scoring run to finish it off.

Northwestern (5-0) hosts North Schuylkill next Friday in a rematch of last year’s District 11 Class 3A final. Lehighton looks to regroup on Homecoming against Pottsville, also next Friday.

Senior writer Tom Housenick can be reached at thousenick@mcall.com

NORTHWESTERN LEHIGH 50, LEHIGHTON 0

Northwestern: 21; 14; 0; 15 — 50  

Lehighton: 0; 0; 0; 0 — 0

ORDER OF SCORING

First quarter

NWL: Braxton Lakatosh 30 run (Chase Sukanick kick), 9:40

NWL: Brady Zimmerman 28 run (Sukanick kick), 5:50

NWL: Mason Bollinger 3 run (Sukanick kick), 2:29

Second quarter

NWL: Shane Hulmes 4 run (Sukanick kick), 8:10

NWL: Shane Leh 3 pass to Bollinger (Sukanick kick), 1:32

Fourth quarter

NWL: Leh 15 pass to Michael Lagowy (Sukanick kick), 10:25

NWL: Jesse Yenser 1 run (Trey Snyder pass to Kendall Wikert), 1:30

TEAM STATISTICSNWL; LehFirst downs; 20; 5Rushes-yards; 32-287; 23-52Passing yards; 184; 31Comp-Att-INTs; 16-20-0; 4-12-1Punts-avg.; 0-0; 7-29.8Fumbles-lost; 0-0; 0-0Penalties-yards; 4-25; 5-25

INDIVIDUAL STATISTICSRushing: (Northwestern) Braxton Lakatosh 12-107; Chase Sukanick 9-99; Shane Hulmes 1-4, TD; Mason Bollinger 1-3, TD; Brady Zimmerman 2-33, TD; Jesse Yenser 4-40, TD; Trey Snyder 1-2; Tripp Sell 1-1; team 1-(-2); (Lehighton) Lucas Croizier 11-34; Jayse Lawrence 7-(-1); Equan Warner 4-19; Jose Rodriguez 1-0.

Passing: (Northwestern) Leh 15-19-0, 166 yards, 2 TDs; Snyder 1-1-0, 18 yards; (Lehighton) Lawrence 4-12-1, 31 yards.

Receiving: (Northwestern); Bollinger 5-45, TD; Michael Lagowy 5-45, TD; Hulmes 2-34; Zimmerman 3-42; Sell 1-18; (Lehighton) Caden Meek 2-20; Blake Roberts 2-11.

https://www.mcall.com/2025/09/19/northwestern-lehigh-football-cleans-things-up-shuts-out-lehighton/