Having split two regular season games, Northampton and Parkland came into the Lehigh Valley Conference semifinals very familiar with each other. During the regular season, the two teams were separated by one goal in each of the games, but Parkland was able to mount a strong effort in the semis and take a 2-0 win over the Konkrete Kids, bouncing them from the LVC playoffs.

The Trojans dominated in the early going, but couldn't put the ball in the net and allowed Northampton to gain some momentum. The two teams took turns battling for opportunities and went into half-time in a scoreless tie and played another 25 minutes without a goal being scored. In the next six minutes, Parkland would score twice to take a 2-0 advantage and nearly got a third goal on a shot that just grazed the cross bar and went over the net.

The Trojans' first goal came from Oliver Guerra with 15:13 left in the game and Ahmad Awadalla gave Parkland some breathing room when he scored with 9:20 left to play. Parkland didn't simply sit back and play defense and had a couple other chances, with the best coming with just 1:10 remaining when Tyler Madeira slammed a shot that glanced off the very top of the cross bar and went harmlessly over the net.

"We changed our shape a lot with this group to try to get them to move off the ball," said Trojan head coach Patrick Birns. "We've been struggling with that all year. We're what you might call an immature team, just by the way that the kids seem to react when they're together. When they start to work as a group, I think you can see what happens, like in the second half when they played together."

The Trojans will look for their third LVC title in five years when they face Easton in the finals tonight.

Parkland (13-5, 13-2) came into the playoffs seeded second, while Northampton (13-6, 10-5) grabbed the league's wild card spot and was seeded third, ahead of East Division winner Easton. Emmaus entered as the Emmaus entered as the top seed.

"That's what you want to do," said Birns. "You want to make the playoffs and then when you make the playoffs, you want to be in the finals, so we're one step closer now and these two other teams [Emmaus and Easton] are really good teams, so no matter who we play, it's going to be a really good game."

While Parkland defeated both Easton and Emmaus during the regular season, Birns noted that Emmaus might have the stronger desire for a rematch with the Trojans after beating the Hornets 7-0 at Emmaus earlier in the season.

"We talked about it a lot and maybe we awoke the sleeping giant," he said.

"That was their only league loss, so I know they would like to come back and prove that it was a fluke. Every shot that we took just seemed to go in and it wasn't total domination, because if you look at the shots on goal, I think we only outshot them by about five shots; it was just one of those games."

Parkland downed Easton 3-0 in their only regular season meeting.