The Northampton field hockey team won their fifth consecutive game on Saturday, beating Freedom 9-1. The win moves the Kids to 5-1 through the first third of the 18-game regular season.

Bri Sell got things going with the first goal of the game at the 22:39 mark. Morgan McEntire recorded the assist.

Less than a minute later, McEntire scored a goal of her own with an assist from Jordan Somers.

Freedom got back into the game when Paige Jenkins scored on a breakaway at the 12:56 mark.

Northampton took the slim 2-1 lead into the halftime break despite outshooting the Patriots 9-1 and leading in corners 6-0.

In the second half, the Kids’ relentless offensive pressure yielded better results as Somers and Olivia Lorah both recorded hat tricks. Sell also added a goal. Maddie Siegfried and Lorah both had two assists and McEntire notched another one as well.

Head coach Carrie Saul explained how the team refocused for the second half, “At halftime we made a few adjustments. Went back to our goals, looked at what they were and we knew that we wanted to hit certain marks in the second half. They turned it on for the last 25 minutes.”

Defensively, the only shot Northampton surrendered in the whole game was the Jenkins goal. They also held the Patriots without a corner. Saul named Meredith McGraw the defensive player of the game.

On Thursday, the Kids travel to Pleasant Valley to take on the Bears in a game that shouldn’t pose a problem. Then two of the EPC’s powerhouses will show up in Northampton. On Saturday, 2018 EPC and District XI runner-up Easton will make an appearance. The Rovers lost to Stroudsburg, who lost to Northampton, who lost to Liberty, who lost to Easton, so this game will have major implications for playoff seeding.

Lorah described the importance of seeding to the team, “We want to be ranked pretty high going into the playoffs. In the past couple years, we’ve been like seventh or eighth ranked, so we had to play a higher seed. It would be nice to be top-five this year.”

Then on Monday, Emmaus - winners of the last 30 district championships - will come to town to give the Kids a chance to make a memory that would last a lifetime.