In a game marred by heavy rain, yellow cards and ejections, Whitehall lost a 2-0 decision to Emmaus Tuesday night at Memorial Field at Emmaus High School.

Much of the game was played in varying amounts of rain that fell hard during parts of the game. Things started to get a little more physical in the second half and the refs wound up handing out five yellow cards and ejecting an Emmaus assistant coach and a Whitehall player.

With 30:05 left in the first half, Thomas Hanvey played a ball into the box in front of Jake Groh, who beat goalie Justin Mattison. Emmaus (3-1 EPC, 4-2 overall) had the upper hand through the first half and kept constant pressure on the Zephyr defense with Mattison turning aside some big shots. The Hornets got a corner kick with 16-seconds left in the first half and took advantage of a breakdown in the Whitehall defense to go up 2-0.

Coach Chris Bastidas wasn’t happy with either of the goals that his team allowed.

“It was something we worked on all day yesterday. We knew they were going to go wide and then throw it into our box and they found an opening anyway and put it in,” said Bastidas of the first goal. “We started playing a little better and getting some momentum, but they were playing really well. Then, they scored on a corner-kick that was just sloppy from our defense and they beat us right there. That was tough with 16-seconds left in the half and it changed it because all of a sudden, it wasn’t a 1-0 game anymore.”

Whitehall (2-2, 2-2) came out playing well in the second half and put pressure on the Emmaus defense. As the rain fell a little harder, both teams turned to a more physical style of play. With 33:52 left in the second half, Emmaus’ Eric Johnson was given a yellow card and just seven minutes later, Nathaniel Walker of Whitehall picked up a yellow card as well. Emmaus assistant coach A.J. Bishop had been warned earlier in the game about yelling at the officials and was ejected shortly after Walker’s yellow card.

“I thought the game started getting a little chippy at the start of the second half. Emmaus played really well in the first half and dominated ball position and dominated play and we came out and we had made some changes and moved some things around, and I thought we started playing really well,” said Bastidas.

Emmaus players were called for two more yellows and Whitehall picked up one more yellow before Walker was ejected with 2:55 left in the game for comments that he made to an official.

“Whenever it’s wet, people are going to be a little late to the ball and stuff like that and it gets to be a bit chippy of a game. It was a physical game back-and-forth but it wasn’t anything crazy, just like it is every time that we play these guys,” Bastidas noted. “I thought the refs started to control it too late and started throwing cards out and then it changed what was going on and it became where there was a card on every single foul.”

“Then, at the very end, with 10-minutes left, we got more frustrated and we have to be able to keep our heads in that situation. I thought we were there the whole time but the cards affected our mannerisms and things like that. We were good soccer wise but mentally, we let it affect us. You have to do everything you can do legally to win the game, but when you get yellow cards on every foul, it’s going to affect your game.”

Whitehall has a home game tonight against Freedom before road contests at Pocono Mountain West, Parkland and Pleasant Valley.