In the first game of the season, the Emmaus field hockey team celebrated a record-setting win over Easton that tied coach Sue Butz-Stavin for the national record for the most wins by a high school field hockey coach.

The season ended with junior Meredith Sholder scoring a game-winning overtime goal to not only make her the school’s all-time leader in goals scorer, but also to make her team this year’s PIAA Class AAA champions with a 1-0 win over Palmyra.

The goal somewhat mirrored the one that made Emmaus District 11 champions for the 27th straight season with a 1-0 overtime win against Stroudsburg. In that game, it was a pass from Sholder to sophomore Leah Zellner, who fired on goal for the game winner. This time, the duo switched roles, with Zellner setting up Sholder.

Zellner came to the left side of the goal with no angle thanks to an aggressive play by goalkeeper Cheyenne Sprecher. Zellner centered the ball with a pass to Sholder, who had an open look and fired it into the middle of the cage for the win.

“She’s one of our sophomores and she starts for us,” said Butz-Stavin of Zellner. “I think at times, she’s got it and at other times, I think the pressure of the game gets to her. But she was cool-hand Luke there at the end.”

Emmaus finished the season with a 27-0 record and was 4-0 in overtime games, which are played with just seven players per team on the field. The seven-a-side format has been one of Emmaus’ strengths this season, but even so, Butz-Stavin wasn’t looking to just ride out the second half, during which Palmyra had the better of the play, keeping Emmaus goalkeeper Paige Garloff busy with one big save after another.

“You want to win the game in regulation,” said Butz- Stavin, who finished the season with 865 wins in her 40 years of coaching. “You don’t really want to go to OT, but it’s something that we practice and we’ve been good at all season long. The more we played it, the more confidence we had with it.”

The win also helped to erase the memory of last year’s semifinal loss to Palmyra, which went on to become 2014 PIAA co-champions after playing Penn Manor to a 1-1 tie through regulation and two fifteen-minute overtime periods in last year’s state title game.

“We talked about it this week,” said Butz-Stavin. “They regretted that they didn’t give it their best effort in the semifinals last year against them, so I think all through the playoffs, they wanted to be sure that they gave it their best effort in every game and not walk off the field feeling that they didn’t give all they had.”

The season was marked by Butz-Stavin’s coaching milestone, Sholder’s 100th career goal and, finally, her school record goal. In this year’s undefeated season, the Lady Hornets outscored opponents 175-11. In beating Palmyra, they downed a team that hadn’t given up a goal in the postseason since its conference semifinal.

“I knew we had a lot of potential coming into the season,” Sholder noted. “I had a feeling that this day was going to come from the beginning of the season, because it’s an amazing group of girls that all just came together throughout the season.”

As for Garloff, who notched her 17th shutout of the season, her six saves, many of which were anything but routine, helped the Hornets wrap up their 11th state title in 13 trips to the PIAA finals.

“We came into this game knowing that they were going to give us a lot of competition,” said Garloff. “We really practiced hard the last three days and we knew what we were up against and we were ready to really come out and play hard.

“This is my last field hockey game and it’s the most amazing experience ever. I’ll never forget this, it’s amazing.”