HELLERTOWN - Northwestern Lehigh faced a Saucon Valley team depleted by injuries Friday night, but any healthy team would have struggled against the Tigers who came out on fire and took a 42-14 win in the penultimate game of the regular season, moving their record to 9-0.

The Panthers won the coin toss and deferred to have the ball in the second half, which was fine with the Tigers.

Taylor Wikert’s 35-yard kickoff return put Northwestern in business from its own 39-yard line. On the first play from scrimmage, coach Josh Snyder didn’t like what he saw in the defensive alignment and changed the play at the line of scrimmage. The call changed to a little flair pass to Cade Christopher, and it worked perfectly as the junior receiver maneuvered his way through the defense and scampered 61 yards for the first score of the game.

“That was a great call by the coaches, and it worked perfectly,” said Christopher, who would finish with three trips to the end zone on the night. “I just had a couple guys to beat and when I got around them it was just a sprint to the end zone. It was exactly how we wanted to start the game on that first drive.”

Saucon Valley (4-5) wound up with a fourth-and-one at their own 37 on the next drive and was unable to pick up the first down to give Northwestern a short field. After throwing deep on the first play and coming up with an incompletion, Dalton Clymer got two carries covering 25 yards on the four-play drive, finishing off the march by going 13 yards for the touchdown. Luke Benvin was perfect on the night in extra points and put the Tigers up 14-0.

Saucon Valley again turned the ball over on downs, this time at the Northwestern 24 after Wikert tipped a pass away that was intended for Ty Csensits in the end zone.

The Tigers put together a drive that carried through the remaining 5:04 of the first quarter and on the first play of the second quarter, Clymer again finished things off by rushing five yards to paydirt.

From there, Saucon Valley had trouble getting anything to work and turned the ball over when they lost a fumble on the opening play of their first possession of the second quarter. The fumble turned into a nice little pass from Justin Holmes to Christopher that put the Tigers up 28-0.

Saucon Valley didn’t want to risk turning the ball over on downs on their next possession, so they punted on a fourth-and-12 only to have Christopher again work some magic and run the punt back 58 yards for his third touchdown of the night and a 35-0 Northwestern lead.

“I had a lot of great blocking on that play, the guys really opened things up for me and I saw the gap and just ran,” said Christopher.

The starters got the second half off as Austin Sosnovik took over at quarterback with Julian Schaffhouser, Eli Zimmerman and Landen Matson all getting carries for Northwestern. Schaffhouser wound up leading the young group with eight carries to pick up 25 yards.

Saucon Valley continued to play many of their starters and were able to reach the end zone twice to close the gap slightly over the final two quarters.

25 YEARS AGO ... The last time the Tigers were 9-0 was in 1996 and they lost their final game to finish 9-1 in the Colonial League that season and 9-2 overall. The year before they were also 9-1 in league games and 10-2 overall. Prior to that, their only 9-1 season was in 1970. The Tigers will look to head into districts with a perfect 10-0 record when they take on Catasauqua at home next week.

YOUNG GUNS ... “I thought they did a nice job for us,” said Snyder of the young players who got to see plenty of time in the second half of the game. “They were facing more experienced players out there tonight and they did pretty well.”

DISTRICT UPDATE ... Allentown Central Catholic and Pottsville both won Friday night pretty much locking themselves into the second and third spots in the district rankings for 4A behind Northwestern. Wilson can take the driver’s seat for the fourth and final spot with a win over Blue Mountain on Saturday. As things stand now, Northwestern would face Wilson in the opening round of districts.