Having strong young players who can slide into key roles for your team is the secret behind a good program and youth is definitely being served on the Emmaus girls soccer team.

The Lady Hornets are 3-3-1 overall and 3-2 in the Lehigh Valley Conference, but figure to be a better second-half team thanks to young players starting to gain more confidence with increased playing time.

Nowhere was the infusion of youth more evident than in Emmaus' 2-1 win over a previously undefeated Nazareth team (6-1-1, 3-1-1) that came to Memorial Field to challenge the Hornets. The two Emmaus goals were scored by sophomore forwards Jenny Fritz and Peyton Ritter.

"We felt that on Monday against Central, we carried a lot of the play," said coach Rob Rooney. "Then at the end of the day, we looked at the scorebook and said 'despite the fact that we had more possession and probably had the ball a fair amount more than they did, they still had more shots on goal than us.'

"That was particularly concerning to me, so we challenged our forwards tonight to make more of an impact on the game and Peyton and Jen Fritz, two sophomore forwards went out and did what they needed to do. Both were gutty, scrappy kind of goals and I'm thrilled for them and really happy with how we played tonight."

Ritter's first-half goal gave Emmaus a 1-0 lead, but the Blue Eagles battled right back and tied the game. The two teams battled throughout much of the second-half when another sophomore, Kristen Roth passed to Fritz, who picked up her fourth goal of the season with just 5:28 remaining in the game. From there, the Emmaus' defense and freshman goalie Mackenzie McCann shut down Nazareth for McCann's first varsity win.

"We have confidence in Mackenzie," said Rooney. McCann was starting in place of Kay Gustafson, who was under the weather. "She's the only freshman goalkeeper we've ever put on the field in my nine years here, but she was certainly up to the task. She made saves when she needed to make saves and she did a great job for us."

While senior Mandy McCarthy leads the team is scoring with six goals, 11 of the team's 23 goals have been scored by freshmen or sophomores, led by Fritz' four goals. Rooney believes the play of his underclassmen has been a key for his team and appreciates the contribution that they're making.

"It's more than nice, it's critical," he said. "For us to be successful, it can't be one player all the time. You can't win a conference tournament anymore being a one-player team.

"For us to have real success going forward, it's going to require us to have other players who can step to the plate. Everybody knows about Mandy McCarthy, but people don't necessarily know about Jen Fritz and Peyton Ritter, so tonight they stepped to the plate and they got the big hits for us."

Ritter has been impressed with how the other members of the team have accepted the newer players and are helping them to improve their game.

"We had a team bonding trip after tryouts and that really helped our team come together and we're playing great together," said Ritter. "Whenever you get time, you just have to play your heart out and do anything you can to win."

As for Fritz, Rooney believes that she is going to get better as the season and her high school career go on and is happy with how she is progressing.

"Jenny's a player who I think is still trying to find her way a little bit," Rooney said. "But we've been working with her in training and she understands the things that she needs to be doing.

"She's coming along well and saw some varsity time last year and has cracked our lineup pretty regularly in the first 11 this year and is coming along very well and we're happy with her."

Fritz is happy with her increase in playing time, but says it's not always easy to be playing at the level that her upperclassmen teammates are able to play.

"It's always better to get good playing time, but it's sometimes difficult getting into the swing of things, but I think it's going to be pretty good," said Fritz.