After Notre Dame's 31-19 upset over Northwestern in week one of the regular season, Tigers head coach Josh Snyder made a prediction to his longtime friend and former Lehigh University teammate, Phil Stambaugh.

Snyder told Stambaugh, now the assistant head coach at Notre Dame, 'see you in districts.' It turns out Snyder was right and the two buddies will be on opposite sidelines again this week, with the District 11 Class AA Championship on the line.In that first week, Notre Dame was coming off an 0-10 season, but had an influx of solid athletes from the closing of Pius X High School. Meanwhile, Northwestern was coming off a District 11 AA championship, but had lost key players. Neither team really knew what to expect from their season, but as it turns out, things went well for both sides."We're different for a couple reasons. One, we're just way more dynamic on offense, not only because Dylan [first-year QB Dylan Snyder] has developed and knows the offense better, but also, from a coaching standpoint, we just know what to expect from our team and how they operate," said coach Snyder. "We're much better at putting them in a position to be successful, by knowing what they're good at and what they're not good at."A lot of things have happened since week one and I think that loss gave us the opportunity to look in the mirror and see what we had to do as a team and as a program."Dylan Snyder, who made his first varsity start against Notre Dame, has gone on to throw for over 1,000 yards this season, while rushing for over 500 more, becoming just the 10th quarterback in Northwestern history to accomplish that feat.Notre Dame has used a wide-open offense and continues to surprise teams with just how physical they really are on both sides of the ball. Coach Chuck Muller, in his seventh season with the Crusaders, has led his team to a 10-1 record, including a win over North Schuylkill in the district semifinals last week. Those 10 wins are a sign of Notre Dame's turnaround from recent seasons when they won a combined total of just 13 games in six previous seasons under Muller."These guys have worked hard this season and they've come together well for us," said Muller. "We can play a physical brand of football, which is what you have to do against Northwestern. They're a big, tough bunch of kids and they're well coached, you have to try to match that physical style and look to make a few breaks for yourself."Both teams are looking forward to the rematch, with the Crusaders looking to show that the opening win wasn't a fluke and the Tigers looking for a bit of revenge, not just for the loss, but for what they perceived as some disrespect from Notre Dame."Taking Xs and Os out of it, I think, yes [we wanted to play Notre Dame]. We weren't happy with how some of the things went down in that first game, we didn't feel like we were respected that well after the game, and sometimes, during the game. It just put a bad, bad taste in our mouth," explained Snyder."You have to have respect for them, because they've grown that program from struggling, like we were, to being champions last season and going into states," said Muller. "They've got a lot of weapons and so do we. I think we deserve some respect too, because this team has put a lot of bad seasons behind them for this program."Snyder is emphasizing to his team that they need to sustain drives on offense, cut short Notre Dame drives on defense and win the turnover battle. He's also letting them know that they'll have to be physical if they're going to repeat as District 11 Champions."We're not going to back down from anybody, we're going to go out there and fight tooth-and-nail. We're always going to be in the game, because our kids are such fighters," Snyder said. "We wanted to be back here and this is what we've been playing for each week of the season, so our kids will go after it when they get on the field."