The first three times that Parkland and Whitehall girls met on the soccer field this season, Parkland came out on top. The fourth and final time that they would meet, it was Whitehall that took advantage of a slow first-half to pick up a 1-0 win in the District 11 semifinals, advancing to play Nazareth for the district championship.

"If you go back and replay all of the Super Bowls, I'm sure there'd be some different outcomes," said Parkland head coach Al Haddad. "They're a great soccer team and I don't want to take anything away from them, they're a great team and playing them four times was difficult. On the same token, had we played in the first half the way we did in the second half, it wouldn't have been a ballgame."

Whitehall senior Kourtney Cunningham took a pass from Ivanna Jones and fired an absolute rocket past goalkeeper Becky Webster, who barely had any time to react because of how hard the ball was kicked. It turned out to be the only goal either team would score, marking a very different type of game than the one where the teams were tied 2-2 after two overtimes and decided the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference Championship on penalty kicks that Parkland won 4-2.

"We allowed a dangerous player to break in on just one shot," said Haddad. "You take away that shot and we outplayed them. I give Kourtney all the credit in the world, she's just a remarkable player.

"One doesn't beat a team, usually, but every now and then, they do and guess what? She's special. It hurts, and the girls played like champions, but we'll be back and we'll learn from it."

Trailing 1-0, Parkland came out with much more intensity in the second half and had some looks, but wasn't able to put a shot past goalkeeper Jude Luckenbill. Twice within two minutes Rachel Medlar was able to get off good shots, but both went just over the crossbar, landing harmlessly on the track at J. Birney Crum Stadium.

"It was just an attitude change," said Haddad. "It was just their determination that we're better than what we played in the first half, that we're not going to just panic and just kick the ball. We're going to stick to our touch and start playing feet, and we started to play the way we always play.

"There was a lot of pressure on them and they put it on themselves. They've been to five straight district championships and they want to go to a sixth one, so they put that pressure on themselves and then, they just didn't deal with it in the first 40 minutes. Give credit to Whitehall for putting that pressure on us to then taking us out of our game a little bit and then, at halftime, we didn't make adjustments. We just told them 'here's what we've got to do.'"

Parkland loses eight seniors (Aly Barlok, Erica Bross, Molly Espinosa, Sam Pavolko, Sara Posocco, McKenna Stengel, Morgan Warminsky and Becky Webster) to graduation. As a group, they compiled a record of 74-11-8, winning three conference titles and one district title in their four years. The graduations will leave holes not just on the field, but in the Parkland program overall.

"There's eight possible championship games for them to go to and they went to seven. That's an impressive group," said Haddad.

"They're just remarkably impressive off the field and what they do for the program has been remarkable. They're academic, they're charity-minded, they're great soccer players and they're great role models. They make sure that other players who need tutors, they find them the tutors and they take accountability for the program and that's tough to replace."