While Emmaus and Parkland were battling against each other in their two regular season games this season, they were also playing on the same team in helping raise money and awareness for cancer research. More specifically, the two teams were helping 2011 Emmaus grad Andrew Schaefer, who is fighting Hodgkin's Lymphoma.

Schaefer has somewhat of a bond to both teams, since he played under both Parkland coach Patrick Birns and Emmaus coach John Cari when the two were on the same staff at Emmaus.

"Red Card Cancer is something that was started from the head coach at Bloomsburg, Paul Payne, who is actually the uncle of Andrew Meeker, who is one of our coaches and teaches in the school district," said Birns. "We did it last year. We teamed up with Emmaus and John Cari had a great idea to get some proceeds to Andrew Schaeffer, who we both coached and to do this is great."

At both of the regular season games, donations were taken to benefit Red Card Cancer, an organization dedicated to raising money for cancer research. Frey Smile Orthodontics also contributed to the cause, donating identical lime green shirts to each team for the players to wear during warm-ups, signifying the two teams coming together as one to join the cause. Emmaus won a 1-0 battle earlier in the season that was played on their home turf and Parkland won a 1-0 battle last Friday that was played on their home field.

Both Cari and Birns have been touched by the struggles that their former player has had to go through and both spoke highly of just how hard Schaefer has had to fight to battle the disease. There were large crowds at both games and donations were accepted from fans throughout the game. Schaefer was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma in December 2012.

"I think it is really special," said Birns. "He's a great kid, who has been fighting this now, I think three times and it keeps coming back. I had him in class as a teacher and I know his sister and his family and it's just really good to do this and that's why the kids were wearing the lime green for lymphoma. [Schaefer] keeps working and it was great to see two teams come out here and work really hard."