The Northampton boys soccer team came into J. Birney Crum Stadium in Allentown last Thursday night looking to advance to their first EPC tournament final since claiming the league crown in 2023.

However, it was not to be as a pair of one-goal leads at 1-0 and 2-1 were not enough to hold off eventual champion Parkland. The Trojans took the quarterfinal contest over the K-Kids 5-2 on the strength of a hat trick by Ethan Frey.

The game got off to an ideal start for the Kids. Jacob Fallenstein got on a ball behind the Parkland defense and was hauled down in the box earning a penalty kick. Jariel Medina went low left to beat the Trojans’ keeper and stake Northampton to a 1-0 lead 9 minutes into the contest.

There was speculation among the observers that the foul should have resulted not only in a PK, but also a card.

Northampton head coach Chris Bastidas agreed, “I thought he was going to be a red inside the box, maybe yellow, but then nothing. I mean, either way we got a goal there, we got up early which is what we wanted to do. That was the plan coming in – get a goal early before the lights come on.”

Given the wild, 5-4 game, a Northampton victory, the two teams played to open the season, it seemed unlikely that single goal would hold with 71 minutes of soccer left to play.

Frey scored his first goal of the night with 11 minutes left in the first half to equalize and the teams went into the intermission deadlocked at 1.

It didn’t take long into the second half for the Kids to reclaim the lead.

A Parkland foul gave Northampton a free kick just past the midfield stripe. Blake Turner struck a ball that landed in the box, took a bounce and eluded the Parkland goalie, touching off a raucous celebration.

The joy was short-lived however as Frey split a pair of K-Kids’ defenders 51 seconds later to knot the game at 2-2.

Frey delivered a gut punch less than a minute and a half later as he put home a cross to complete his hat trick and gave Parkland the lead for the first time in the game.

Alexander Hurwitz gave the Trojans an insurance goal with 22 minutes left in the contest.

Edward Curelar capped off the scoring with 2 minutes to play.

Bastidas described his message to the team after the game, “We can’t dwell on this game. We lost. They played better than us tonight. But there’s things to learn. We’re going to go back and go through the film, but what we do here isn’t necessarily going to affect how we play other teams. It sucks to lose in the playoffs, but the season’s not over.”

With Parkland winning the EPC title over Freedom, the K-Kids got bumped down to the third seed in the District XI 4A playoffs. That set up a quarterfinal matchup with sixth-seeded Liberty Wednesday night, too late for the result to make Press deadlines. A win would put them into Tuesday’s semifinals against the winner of Emmaus and Whitehall.