When Al Haddad took over the Parkland girls soccer program, one of his biggest challenges was stopping an Emmaus senior named Sarah Oswald. Now, Haddad is well respected as a coach in the Lehigh Valley, but Oswald, who took over as Emmaus’ head coach last year, is still a bit of a thorn in his side.

When the two teams met in the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference final last week, Oswald and her team gave the veteran coach and his undefeated team all they could handle, but dropped a 2-0 decision behind two goals by Brooke Schutter.

“We knew coming in how tough they were going to be and how well coached they are,” said Haddad. “They battled us tough in the regular season and they really stepped it up tonight.”

The two teams highlighted their defenses through most of the match, with the game remaining scoreless at halftime. Emmaus goalie Jess Harnett was credited with 10 saves. Parkland had five shots hit the crossbar, with one of them going in to put Parkland up 1-0 with 26:42 left to play in the game.

“It’s a scary feeling,” said Harnett of hearing the ball clank off the crossbar. “You just have to try to pick up the ball as fast as you can and look to make a play. The one came down just behind me and went in, so there wasn’t much I could do about that one, but the others bounced our way.

“It was a lot, even with the defense playing really well. They’re really good and they got a lot of shots. Our defense really prevented them from getting even more shots that made it back to me, so you really have to credit our defense as a whole.”

Emmaus reached the finals by beating Central Catholic in the quarters and downing Stroudsburg 2-0 in the semis. Reilly McGinnis missed the game against Central because of a commitment to be at West Point, but she made up for her absence with two goals against the Mounties in the semifinal win.

“I was on my official visit at West Point and it’s something that I wasn’t allowed to miss, so my teammates were very understanding about it, which was great,” said McGinnis. “The fact that everybody stepped up to put a 3-0 beating on Central, a team that is really well respected in this league, made my weekend very special. I was very proud of them.

“It just shows the kind of team that we are this year. Everyone has been waiting for our chance to make it to a final and we finally got that. The fact that those girls believed that they could bring us to a semifinal is so great.”

The next step for Emmaus is to fight its way through districts, which start for the Hornets Thursday when they host Pleasant Valley at Memorial Field. Emmaus is the four seed in the tournament, while the Panthers come in as the fifth seeded team in Class 4A. The two teams didn’t meet during the regular season.

Emmaus (14-8) has 10 shutouts in 21 games this season and has won six of their last eight games coming into districts. Parkland comes into the tournament as the top seed and will play the winner of the Nazareth-Pocono Mountain East game. It’s possible that Emmaus and Parkland (22-0) could have another showdown in the district semifinals if the two continue winning.

“The quality of play has been up a level from what we’ve been playing at,” said Oswald. “We sort of peaked early in the season and then came down a little, but now, we’re playing quality soccer again. We’ve been able to do exactly what we’ve wanted to do in our last few games.”