The Emmaus girls soccer team has clinched a spot in districts and is fighting its way toward a spot in the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference. A win over Parkland this past weekend would have put the Hornets into the conference tournament, but the two rivals played 100 minutes and came out of the contest with a scoreless draw, leaving the Lady Hornets shy of a spot in the EPC postseason.

"It's not disappointing," said Emmaus head coach Rob Rooney. "If anything, I think me and the girls are a little ambivalent toward it. We would have liked to have won the game, but it's probably the right result.

"They had a couple of chances, maybe they had the game's best one or two chances, but certainly, we had good chances as well and we carried a lot of the play in that final overtime, but it was back-and-forth, so it's probably the right result."

Twice Parkland came close to winning the game during the first 80 minutes. The first time, a shot went off the crossbar well above goalkeeper Jess Harnett, who had leaped as high as she could but was still short of the bar. Another ball bounced off an Emmaus defender and caromed off the crossbar out of the reach of Harnett, but, like the first, bounded harmlessly out of bounds.

The game was not without its controversy, as both coaches were given yellow cards for arguing with officials over calls.

The draw leaves Emmaus at 8-5-2 overall on the season and 8-4-2 in the EPC and puts the Hornets in a battle for the final playoff spot.

To get in, Emmaus needs a win over either Whitehall (13-2, 11-2) or Central Catholic (10-6, 9-5). Emmaus beat Whitehall 1-0 earlier in the season at home and lost to Central Catholic 1-0 on the road when those two teams met. Rooney is banking on the fact that his team has shown strong improvement since those earlier games.

"We're playing good soccer," said Rooney. "That's three straight shutouts and we're a team that's improved in almost every way over where we were early in the year.

"The first time around, we had a 5-2 loss to Nazareth. This time around, a 2-1 loss that was 1-1 with 20 minutes left and both of those goals were ridiculously well-struck balls. Then, this is a team [Parkland] that we lost to 2-0 three weeks ago and a team that carried almost all of the play and that certainly wasn't the case today.

"One win guarantees that we're in. Whitehall is a game that you would think they might be favored in at their place, but they've got to play [three games in four days] and then they play us. Then, Thursday, we play Central Catholic and we'll take our chances at home on Senior Night in that game; we like our chances."

There are some other complicated scenarios that could see Emmaus make its way into the playoffs even if it loses both remaining games, but it would need a lot of help from a number of other teams to make that happen.