After a 2-1 loss to Central Catholic last week, the only way Emmaus was going to make the conference playoffs was if Northampton downed Nazareth that same night. Nazareth was heavily favored and figured to collect the win that would assure them of a playoff spot, but Northampton downed Nazareth 2-0 and Emmaus rebounded to beat Dieruff to put the Lady Hornets in and the Lady Eagles out of the LVC playoffs.

The gift from Northampton was something that coach Rob Rooney simply didn't see coming after his team's disappointing loss to Central Catholic.

"If a miracle happens in the next 20 minutes, then that would be great," said Rooney after his team's loss. "But it wouldn't change the fact that we had two chances in the last eight days to clinch that playoff spot. It simply shouldn't come down to us needing help from someone else and needing a semi-miracle result to get in and that's just on us. We've got to look in the mirror."

Rooney lamented his team's losses to Northampton and Whitehall, two teams that Emmaus should have beaten during the regular season, but wound up losing both contests.

"You can call them bad losses [losses to Northampton and Whitehall], because they are. We've been inconsistent and this game didn't have to get to this point," explained Rooney of needing a win over the Vikettes to insure a playoff spot. "Even if you don't characterize the loss to Whitehall as a bad loss, because they're a talented team with a really good attacking player in Courtney Cunningham, we were in control of our own destiny; we could have locked a playoff spot up last Tuesday and we didn't do it on that day and we had another chance today and we didn't get the job done again and that's on us.

"That's on nobody but the team and me as the head coach."

Emmaus enters the LVC playoffs as the three-seed, just ahead of Easton. Central Catholic is the top seed, with Parkland number two. The Vikettes figure to be the favorite, having finished their LVC portion of the schedule with a 13-0-1 record. No matter what happens in the LVC, Emmaus is qualified for districts, but will need to play better than they are right now.

"I get tired of saying 'nobody is going to want to look across the bracket and see us,' but to be honest, we haven't been consistent enough that any top team is going to look at us and quake in fear, because we're not scoring goals and we're just not as good as we need to be."