The Pleasant Valley Bears probably won’t be sending a Christmas card to the Emmaus boys soccer team this year. After all, the Hornets have bounced the Bears from districts in three of the last five years now after a 3-1 win over Pleasant Valley Saturday at the Zephyrs Sports Complex in Whitehall.

The loss eliminated the Bears and sent Emmaus to the semifinals for the sixth straight season. Liberty will provide the competition for Emmaus in the next round.

Saturday’s game was moved to Whitehall after security issues arose at Emmaus late last week. Moving the game meant losing home field advantage and took away the final home game that the Hornet senior players would have played at Memorial Field. Coach John Cari believes that the situation may have affected his players a little, but they battled through.

“They didn’t complain about it,” he said. “I know the seniors wanted that one last opportunity to play at home as a send-off and that’s hard to take that away from them, and I feel for them, but things are out of our control and out of our athletic department’s control. We just do what we have to do and get through it and get refocused for another week.”

Emmaus got early pressure on Pleasant Valley, but it took a little while to make it pay off. John Heberlein scored off an assist from Kacper Grycel at 18:35 of the first half to give Emmaus a 1-0 lead.

“Kacper had the ball on the right flank and it got deflected and just came to me and I just hit it,” said Heberlein. “It went through a lot of traffic and it found its way into the back of the net.”

“John’s been a good, hard-working reserve,” said Cari. “He’s a sophomore. He’s a young kid. We knew his work-rate and his speed would come through. He’s so mild-mannered about things, so he’s not celebrating or anything on the side, he’s just doing his job, which I love about him. He’s got a good future ahead of him.”

Devin Woltal scored for Pleasant Valley 16 minutes into the second half to tie the game and again, it took the Hornets a little while to respond, but when they did, they erupted for two goals in a minute and 16-seconds. First came a goal from Grycel to put Emmaus up 2-1, followed by a John Fritz goal. Fritz took the ball at midfield and worked his way through the Bears defense to give Emmaus a 3-1 cushion.

“They dropped a good amount of players back and we had some trouble breaking through, but eventually, we found a couple and it was enough to win the game,” said Heberlein. “I just knew we could not lose this game. We were playing well all game and had the pressure on them, so I knew we’d find one.”

The game also marked the return of goalkeeper Dylan Sosnow, who had been out with a thumb injury. Sophomore Sam Cho did an admirable job filling in for the junior goalie, but Cari believes that Sosnow brings experience back to the position.

“It was good to have Dylan back,” Cari said. “He just got cleared this week, so we were glad to see him. We had him working on things that he could do until he got his full clearance, but it’s a little bit of a better feeling. Nothing against Sam, he did a great job, but Dylan’s been our guy.”

The District 11 Championship is scheduled for Thursday and Emmaus would face either Parkland or Pocono Mountain East if it advances past Liberty in the semifinals, which were played after Press deadline.