This may be coach Lizzie Millen’s first year on the job, but there’s no denying that she knows how to work with her players. Key reminders from Millen played a big part in Parkland’s 1-0 win over Pocono Mountain East in the first round of the District 11 Class AAA field hockey playoffs.

After playing a scoreless first half, Millen sat her players down at intermission and reminded them about the game plan that they came into the game with, but had somehow strayed from during their first 30 minutes on the field.

“We started the game off strong and then we kind of hit a lull,” said Millen “I just reminded them about what our game plan was and what we went into this game trying to do, and once they got back into that, we started playing better.”

The result was a much more dominating style by Parkland as it controlled much of the play in the second half, making it difficult for the Cardinals to even get the ball near the Parkland goal. Just as goalkeeper Brie Barraco turned in an excellent performance in goal for Parkland in the first half, Pocono Mountain East goalkeeper Jess Hohenstein did the same for her team in the second, until Rachel Rizzetto scored with 17:36 left to play.

That’s when Millen took the unusual step of calling a timeout immediately following the goal.

“Usually after we score, we get so excited and kind of forget that we still have a game to play,” said Millen “I wanted to just bring them in, calm them down and just remind them that we still had a lot of time to play and 1-0 is not a real lead in any way. It was just to calm them down a little bit.”

The win advances Parkland to the district quarterfinals, where the Trojans meet second-seeded Stroudsburg. The game is set for Thursday at 6:30 at Stroudsburg High School.