“Don’t count your reps, make your reps count.”

That saying is one Palmerton head coach Chris Walkowiak constantly drives home to his squad as the Bombers like to spread the wealth offensively. On Friday night, Walkowiak’s players certainly heard that message loud and clear as four different players found the end zone in the game in a rout over Schuylkill Haven, 56-20.

Setting the tone is important early on in any game and the Bombers went to their tone setter in quarterback Matt Machalik on the first play of the game and Machalik didn’t disappoint, taking off for 82 yards down the middle of the field to get Palmerton off to an explosive start.

“We knew we wanted to get out to a fast start and we knew we needed to step up our physicality against an always-physical Schuylkill Haven team,” said Walkowiak. “Credit to all our guys, because all our runners ran hard tonight. But Matt, he looked like a man possessed at times. He was running through piles, making guys miss, it really almost looked like a video game at times. He just plays with a lot of passion, all of our guys do, and credit to the offensive line tonight as well for giving our guys good holes to run through.”

The Bombers’ offense was consistently good throughout the night, but early on the Palmerton defense had some trouble with the Schuylkill Haven rushing attack as the Hurricanes marched the ball down to the Bombers seven-yard line, responding well to Machalik’s big play.

But as they did throughout the game, fumbles plagued the Hurricanes as a miscue on the exchange to running back Connor Goehring resulted in a Palmerton recovery at its own one-yard line. The Bombers took advantage, driving 99 yards capped off by a 15-yard Stephen Jones run to make it a 13-0 advantage early on in the first.

That stand by the Bombers’ defense sparked four consecutive scores to make it a 35-0 Palmerton lead with 7:07 remaining in the second quarter. A 22-yard hookup from Machalik to Lucas Heydt, a 57-yard scamper from Daniel Luckykanish and a 20-yard dash from Machalik put Haven in a hole early. Machalik added another rushing touchdown with just 22 seconds left in the half after a Hurricanes score on a nifty 77-yard jaunt to make it 42-7 at the half.

“We called that timeout early on when they drove the ball down there on us because I just thought we weren’t being physical enough defensively,” said Walkowiak.

“I like the way we responded there, but we have some stuff to work on. We were able to get the huge momentum swing though with the turnover and then go 99 yards and score. We bent a lot there and we didn’t break, but that was definitely I think a swing in the game for sure.

Machalik continued to terrorize the Schuylkill Haven defense in the third quarter, rushing in from 35 yards out and a Jones one-yard touchdown run in the fourth quarter ended the Bombers scoring barrage on the evening. Haven added two more scores in the second half on Goehring 10-yard run and a pitch and catch between Travis Richie and Kevin Fitzpatrick.

BIG NIGHT... Machalik rushed for four scores and threw for another, rushing for 227 yards on just seven carries for an outlandish 32.4 yards per carry average. Machalik was responsible for 352 total yards of offense.

HIGH SCORING... With its 56-point effort tonight, Palmerton is now averaging 42.1 points per game on the season.

CHUNKY... The Bombers run game was gaining yardage in big chunks on the night as it averaged 18.95 yards per carry.