(EDITOR’S NOTE: The Times News will be running a series of stories asking area coaches and athletic directors to recall their “most memorable” sporting event. Today’s most memorable moment comes from Northern Lehigh football coach Joe Tout.)

By PATRICK MATSINKO

pmatsinko@tnonline.com

As Joe Tout thought back to his most memorable moments during his coaching career, he recalled a memory that might have played a key role in pushing the Northern Lehigh football program forward.

“Probably my favorite all-time would be the 2009 Catasauqua playoff game,” Tout said. “If I had to pick one, that one always stuck out to me.”

For Tout, it was a touchstone moment for the Bulldogs. One that washed away the sting of a disappointing loss to the Roughies earlier in the season and laid the groundwork for what was to come.

Northern Lehigh was well on its way to erasing the memory of a disappointing 4-6 campaign in 2008 with a strong start to the following season.

“In 2008, we had a streak where we made the playoffs 10 years in a row come to an end,” said Tout about the success the Bulldogs had enjoyed early in his head coaching career and at the end of former coach Jim Tkach’s career (1992-2005). “Fast forward to 2009, we felt as a staff that we started to get our kids buying in.

“In 2008, we were disappointed … but we felt like we were going to be pretty good the next year.”

The Bulldogs were well-positioned to return to the postseason in 2009, sitting at 7-1 overall heading into a Week 9 contest against Catty.

But the Roughies delivered a reality check.

Catasauqua left Bulldog Stadium with a dominating 21-7 victory, one that left Northern Lehigh reeling.

“It was 21-7, but it felt like a blowout,” Tout said.

The Bulldogs bounced back with a 43-14 win over Palmerton to close out the regular season at 8-2. A 21-6 win over Salisbury the following week in the district quarterfinals, sent Northern Lehigh to the district semis – and setup a rematch against Catty.

“We got done (the postgame talk following the Salisbury win), we do our prayer, and we’re telling our kids when our next practice is - and I’ll never forget Bryan Geist (Northern Lehigh Athletic Director) comes in and tells me that Catasauqua had won,” Tout recalled. “When we told our kids that, you could just see in their eyes how excited they were.

“Catasauqua had just beat us up - out-physicaled us. And when we told our kids that’s who we had, you could just see how much they were looking forward to it.”

The rematch played out in dramatic fashion, with the Bulldogs securing a 20-17 victory after making a goal-line stand in the final seconds.

A late fourth-quarter 36-yard field goal by Catasauqua’s Tyler Miller had temporarily tied the game at 20-20. But a roughing the kicker penalty on the Bulldogs followed, which Roughies’ head coach Tom Falzone accepted, taking the points off the board to set up first and goal at the 9.

Northern Lehigh withstood a pass interference penalty that gave Catty first-and-goal at the 6, two short runs and an incomplete pass from quarterback Brandon Lesko. A false start on fourth down pushed the Roughies back to the six-yard line. With Miller out of the game after suffering an injury on the roughing the kicker penalty - and with no backup kicker and no timeouts remaining - Lesko took one more shot at the end zone.

“They ran a fade to the visitor’s sideline, and with that crown in the field, I never saw it,” Tout said. “I could just hear our fans going crazy. You knew we had won.”

Dylan Hoffman had secured the win by knocking down Lesko’s pass in the end zone.

The Bulldogs fell to North Schuylkill 33-26 in the championship game, but went on to top the Spartans 25-23 the following year for the title on their march to the program’s first Colonial League and district titles since 2005, finishing the year 13-1.

It’s a run Tout isn’t sure would have started without the highs – and lows – the team experienced in 2009.

“That game was just incredible, just because I felt like our kids really bought in to our coaching staff, and it was just such a fun year,” said Tout. “And then to kind of have that feel when we lost to Catasauqua in the regular season, it was one of those, ‘Here we go again’ moments. We kind of felt like we weren’t going to get over that hump to get to a district championship game.

“The next week, we lost to North Schuylkill, which was an absolute heartbreaker. But if we won the district title in 2009, I don’t know if we’d win it in 2010. That Catty game kind of set it up, because if we don’t get to play North Schuylkill and lose to them in 2009 … that was our biggest advantage in 2010, it was just that chip on our shoulder. Nobody was talking about us, and we believed we were just as good as North Schuylkill, and it all started from that Catty game.”