After five weeks of the season, North Schuylkill is in the same position as it was last year, undefeated and looking for points in the District 11 playoff race.
With those five weeks in the books, five teams are still undefeated in Class AA, and separated only by 50 total district points.
Pine Grove leads everyone with 580, followed by Northern Lehigh and Pen Argyl with 570 apiece, and then North Schuylkill and Catasauqua are tied at 530.
Small consolation is that Pine Grove still has Line Mountain on the schedule, and the three Lehigh Valley teams will all play each other before the season is over, so that when this conversation reaches its conclusion after week 10, the Spartans could be sitting with homefield advantage for the playoffs if they also win out.
But if Pine Grove or one of the Lehigh Valley teams also run the table, the Spartans may very well end up a No. 2 or 3 seed based on strength of schedule.
"That's the way it is," North Schuylkill head coach Rick Geist said. "When this league started Schuylkill Haven, Marian and Panther Valley were all AA. Jim Thorpe and I think Tamaqua were AAA. Everyone has shrunk. They lost kids and they probably aren't getting their numbers back.
"Where are we going to go? Not the Heartland because all the sports need to join that and the school board isn't going to sign off on that. We're stuck, and this is what it is. We've been trying to get another bigger team on the schedule, but we're not going five hours to play a high school football game. If there aren't games open, how are you going to play bigger teams? And besides, now that we're on a good run, bigger teams don't want to play us."
All the Spartans can do is play the teams on their schedule and win, and so next up is Tamaqua with its 2-3 record.
"Tamaqua is tough," Geist said. "They come after you and they're going to hit you. We have to be ready and do what we do."
Through four games this season, what the Spartans did was throw the ball on offense, but after Marian applied constant pressure and quarterback Ryan Henning had an off night, North Schuylkill went back to running the ball.
Senior running back Mike Shinkus more than doubled his season output with 202 yards on 22 carries against the Colts.
"Shinkus ran tough," Geist said. "Overall he had a great game because he added 11 or 12 tackles to that."