For Northampton soccer, Monday night first looked terrible, then looked really good for a while.

In the end though, it was a crushing night for the Konkrete Kids, who lost just their second game of the season, both to Emmaus. The Hornets downed Northampton 2-1 in double overtime.

Northampton (6-2-3 EPC, 7-2-3 overall) broke through for a goal with just 2:37 left in regulation to tie the game 1-1. Aaron Eberts fed a pinpoint pass to Russell King who used his speed and a good, physical run to hold off an Emmaus defender and fire a shot to the lower left side of the goal, just past goalie Alex Tomasello to tie the game.

Emmaus’ first goal came off a header by Jake Perry, who took a feed from Alex Aiken. Perry put the shot past Northampton’s Brady Rimple with 9:20 left in the first half to put Emmaus up 1-0. The lead held up until King’s heroics late in the second half.

“We were getting to the end and were losing so we switched the formation up a little bit and we threw a few more guys forward and I think that helped,” noted coach Adam Bastidas. “It opened up a little room for the two guys that we had higher. I don’t know if that pass would have resulted in as much if we hadn’t made that switch. Aaron [Eberts] fed a great ball through and then Russell [King] really fought the guy off and he made a great finish. I was proud of the effort of all of our guys.”

Emmaus (9-2-1, 10-3-1) dominated both halves of the game and put eight shots on goal to just four from Northampton. Rimple made a number of athletic saves, including one in the early minutes of the game that had him tipping a shot over the crossbar that appeared destined to squeeze just under the bar.

“I thought that overall we played well,” Bastidas said. “They’re a good team and they played well, too. I thought that we fought through the whole game even though they were getting a lot of looks, Brady [Rimple] was able to keep the ball out of the net except for that one shot in the first half and we just couldn’t find a way to generate enough opportunities.”

In the first overtime, Emmaus again dominated but neither team was able to score. In the second overtime, just about at the half-way mark, Jake Perry fired a shot that bounced off of the post and caromed out to senior Creyn Muthard who didn’t miss when he played the rebound past Rimple, who was out of position after looking to make a play on the first shot.

“It was a good shot and almost anytime that it hits the post and they follow it in, it’s a goal. I don’t think anything was really wrong with how we played it, it was just a tough situation,” said Bastidas.

The loss to Emmaus broke a 10-game unbeaten streak for Northampton that started after their season-opening loss to Emmaus. Northampton has a tough stretch of games coming up when they have to play Whitehall (5-5-1, 6-6-1), Parkland (8-2-2, 8-3-2) and Southern Lehigh (5-3-0 Colonial, 7-5-0) this week and then face Central Catholic (5-4-3, 6-5-3) and Bethlehem Catholic (2-8-0, 2-9-0) next week ahead of facing Nazareth (1-11-0, 1-12-0) to wrap up the regular season next Thursday.

“At this point in the season, you can’t let up,” noted Bastidas. “You just have to play whoever is on the schedule and look to get as many wins as you can. I think our guys will look at this as a challenge and bounce right back and hopefully, start a new streak and be strong going into the playoffs.”