Most people look forward to Friday. Parkland boys soccer head coach Patrick Birns was especially looking forward last Friday. By day he is a gym teacher at Emmaus, the team his Trojans beat 2-1 to win the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference title last Thursday evening for their second straight league title.

“It’s going to make for a nice Friday,” said Birns last week.

The win was the 20th of the season for Parkland, which has lost just once and that was to South Kent High School in Connecticut, a nationally ranked team.

Parkland came out looking to grab early momentum and did when Dawson Berger scored on a free kick from 30 yards out to give the Trojans a 1-0 advantage. The two teams played their usual physical brand of soccer with neither team holding a distinct advantage until Connor Morris took a pass from Berger and put it past goalie Sam Cho to give the Trojans a little breathing room.

Morris’ goal seemed to take some life out of Emmaus and added some frustration. With 3:21 left in the first half, Emmaus’ Thomas Hanvey was given a yellow card as the frustration of not having scored a goal against Parkland in almost 200 minutes of soccer this season continued to mount.

“We weren’t too happy with our performance in the semifinals,” said Birns. “But I thought we did a real good job tonight in the final and came out really firing on all cylinders. We dominated the ball and threw numbers at them the way we like to. It was a really good first half.”

The scoreless streak would reach just over 225 minutes until Dakota Bauer scored on a penalty kick to put Emmaus back into the game. From there, the game returned to being a physical confrontation, but Parkland held Emmaus at bay and lifted the championship trophy.

“It’s always great to play these guys,” said Berger of meeting up with the Hornets for a third time this season. “We’ll probably see them again in districts, who knows? We just kept the pressure on them throughout the game and they did the same against us. It was big to get those two first-half goals.”

Parkland enters districts as the top-seed and will host Pleasant Valley in the quarterfinals Thursday. The Bears,seeded eighth,- downed Allen in the first round of districts Tuesday night to advance to the quarters. With Parkland and Emmaus on opposite sides of the bracket, the two teams would need to advance to the district championship to force another meeting between the two rivals.