Liberty may have been the sixth-seed in the inaugural Eastern Pennsylvania Conference boys soccer tournament, but they played much better than many people might have thought they would.

After impressive wins over Pocono Mountain East and Stroudsburg - who were seeded third and second, respectively - the Hurricanes came into the finals with a lot of confidence against top-seed Emmaus. Unfortunately, the Hornets were able to come up with big plays when they needed them and left the field with a 2-1 win over Liberty.

Emmaus (19-1-1) came out strong and grabbed a 1-0 lead over Liberty (13-8), but two key Emmaus players, seniors Parker Landis and Greg Lind, collected yellow cards shortly after the goal, giving Liberty key opportunities. The Hurricanes had one shot go off the crossbar, but otherwise, were unable to get any open looks at the goal.

"We seemed to play afraid to lose and I told them at half-time that you can't play in a game like this afraid to lose, you've got to go out and you've got to play and we went out and started winning the 50/50 balls and obviously, you can see what the boys are capable of doing when we're knocking the ball around," said Liberty coach Jason Horvath.

When the aggressive side of Liberty started to show, it didn't take long for Liberty to get on the board. With just 1:24 of the second half gone, Talhah Netherlin put a shot past goalie Ethan Lang to tie the game 1-1. The two sides battled back and forth, with neither team holding the edge in momentum, until Emmaus' Cory Ross took a pass from Kyle Jaeger and put it into the net with 12:43 left in the game.

Liberty didn't lose any aggressiveness though and less than two-minutes later, Trevor Koski launched a vicious shot at the goal that seemed destined to tie the game, but Lang made an acrobatic save to preserve the 2-1 Emmaus lead.

"It was an amazing save by their goalkeeper, an absolutely amazing save by their goalkeeper," praised Horvath after the game. "Tonight's a night where that one pass just needed to get through, that one shot just needed to be a little bit more to the right. We created some good chances against a good team. They're no slouches, they're Emmaus and they're one of the best teams in the state, so to play against them like that gives us a lot of confidence going into the playoffs."

After a rough start to the season, Liberty went on a strong run late in the season before knocking off P.M. East and Stroudsburg in the conference playoffs. Even though it appeared Liberty had taken themselves out of the running for the post-season after their first six games, Horvath and his team had other ideas and never took their eyes off their goal of not only reaching the post-season, but going deep into the playoffs.

"We expected to be here at the start of the season, that was never a question. The schedule, the way it worked out, with some injuries and some unfortunate things that happened in games, we ended up 2-4. They stormed back and won eight out of ten games, and really should have won the rest of them. We had a week where we played five games in six days, but we never doubted ourselves; we knew what we were capable of doing," said Horvath.

The EPC All-Stars were announced prior to the game and Liberty's Colin Muller was named to the first team, while Chase Tackett was named to the second team.

Liberty now enters the District 11 Tournament, with a preliminary round home game against Easton tonight. The winner of that game has a date with top seed Emmaus on Friday. Rest assured that the Hurricanes would love a rematch.