While Emmaus and Stroudsburg aren’t close in proximity, their field hockey programs are developing somewhat of a rivalry. The latest battle came this past Saturday when an overtime goal from Leah Zellner gave Emmaus a 2-1 win in overtime for the Hornets’ 27th straight District 11 championship.

It was the second win for Emmaus over the Mounties in the postseason after they took a 1-0 decision in overtime to win the EPC Championship, avenging last season’s 1-0 defeat at the hands of Stroudsburg for the conference title.

“We’ve had some tough ones over the years,” said coach Sue Butz-Stavin of her team’s performances in district finals. “The one year, we played to overtime against Parkland, so there’s been some nail-biters over the years.”

Meredith Sholder got Emmaus on the board with 16:01 to play in the first-half when she took a pass from Maddie Orobono off a penalty corner to put the Lady Hornets up 1-0. Sholder was openly frustrated by the constant triple-teaming by Stroudsburg, but was able to find ways to contribute and break free for the goal.

“We’ve been practicing with me being triple-teamed, because it’s getting later into the season where people are marking-up,” said Sholder. “There are so many girls on this team that are capable of scoring. Girls like Kira [Koehler], who scored six goals in the one game, so when teams pay so much attention to me, there are a lot of other girls that can beat them, just like Leah did tonight.”

“I thought at times that she was able to dish the ball and get corners,” Butz-Stavin said of Sholder’s play. “It becomes frustrating a little bit, but you just have to hang in there and play the game. We knew that she would draw a lot of attention and that the defense would stack the circle.”

Bridget Cunningham tied the game with 4:38 left in regulation, setting up the seven-on-seven overtime period between the two teams.

The winning goal came on a penalty corner, with Sholder sending a near perfect pass to Zellner to give her the scoring opportunity.

“It really played out nicely, because she [Sholder] just received the ball and did her spin, passed it over and I was open and we scored,” said Zellner of the winning goal. “Our team is very confident in our seven-a-side team, because we work hard on it all summer long and we’re just very confident in it.”

“Our [seven-on-seven] team, we feel very good about it,” said Butz-Stavin. “We’ve got a possession group of kids and it’s all about possession and don’t try to force it, just work the ball up-field and be patient. If you can’t get a shot, then you want to draw a corner and we executed a beautiful corner and it’s a matter of how many repetitions that you do. It was a great read off the play that we called in the huddle.”

The Hornets moved on to face District 1’s fifth place team in Tuesday’s first round of the state playoffs, which was played after press deadline.

Last season, Emmaus went to the semi-finals of the PIAA playoffs before losing to Palmyra 4-0.