If the head honchos at District 11 would have thought about it, they probably could have just had Emmaus and Parkland determine the district champion by going directly to penalty kicks. After all, the two teams had played to two overtime ties in the regular season, with scores of 0-0 and 1-1, so it figured that they would not only need overtime, but would go to penalty kicks to determine the district championship.

Sure enough, that’s what happened.

The two teams were locked in a scoreless tie throughout the game and even two overtime periods couldn’t produce a goal, so they lined up for penalty kicks and Emmaus won 4-2 when Dakota Bauer blasted a shot past Parkland goalie Jacob Varrato to lock up the win for the Hornets.

Goalie Dylan Sosnow was spectacular in regulation and overtime, but really put on a show in the penalty kick phase. Sosnow blocked the first shot from Mark Stenske, while Kacper Grycel and Noah Bacon put Emmaus up 2-0. Parkland hit its next two shots and a shot from Nick Cari went off the crossbar to make it 2-2, but Stefan Zarkov put Emmaus up 3-2. Sosnow blocked another shot, giving Bauer the opportunity to put the best-of-five kicks out of reach and he didn’t miss.

“You never really want it to go there [to penalty kicks], but you just feel ecstatic when it’s over and you came out with a win, especially two years in a row,” said Sosnow. “Every time we play Parkland, somebody steps up and I think this was one of my better games.”

Bauer had some nerves as he stepped up, knowing that if he could put a shot past Varrato his team would be champions. He also knew though that his team had a hot goalie, who would have been capable of stopping the tying shot had it come down to that.

“Stepping up to it, I was nervous, but I knew I had to get that out of my mind,” said Bauer. “I practiced it in practice several times, and just had to go out there and execute. Dylan played a spectacular game and that’s a great team that we just beat, to go to overtime three times and have to decide this on PKs is amazing.”

Emmaus had some rough spots during the season, but pulled everything together late in the year to put on a fantastic run. They lost a heartbreaker to top-seeded Liberty in the EPC playoffs before cutting their way into the district finals and another meeting with rival Parkland.

“We played hard in the conference playoffs, losing in overtime to Liberty, and the two weeks off were valuable to us,” said Cari, who got the 200th win of his coaching career in the opening round of districts against Northampton. “Defensively, we changed shape and I think we’ve done a great job there.

“We played 315 minutes or whatever it was, in three games. That’s insane. It just shows how hard-fought and competitive these games are. It’s not dirty, it’s hard-fought and it could have gone either way when it goes to PKs. We were very fortunate.”

Emmaus came into districts as the number-five seed and knocked off fourth-seeded Northampton and top-seeded Stroudsburg to advance to the finals. Parkland came in as the tournament’s second-seed.