Freedom’s boys’ lacrosse team has a chance to make history this week, but they need to take care of business first.

The Pates (15-4) were in Tuesday’s District 11 3A semifinals and faced top-seeded Delaware Valley. The results were past Press deadlines, but the hope is that a victory would secure their first ever berth in the district championship, which is something the program has been yearning for ever since its inception.

First, however, they needed to get past Del Val, a team that was coming off a first-round bye and who have traditionally played teams from the Lehigh Valley tough.

“Del Val is doing great things up North,” said Freedom head coach Tony Fabrizio. “They’re 15-2 and the first seed, so this game won’t just be a walk in the park. We went up to them a few years ago and got embarrassed by them, so that’s what we relayed to our team. It’ll be a good game to play.”

This isn’t the same Freedom team that Del Val beat up on a few years ago though. This group of Pates have proven that they’ve entered the upper tier of the East Penn Conference powers this season, further evidenced by their 10-9 victory over Emmaus in their district opener last week.

Being able to knock off a program like Emmaus twice in one season was a major step for the program.

“The win versus Emmaus was huge for us as a program and for our team this year,” Fabrizio said. “To beat a good team twice in one season is a difficult thing to do. I think it also shows that our kids never give up. The Emmaus game definitely didn’t start the way we planned but our team refused to give up.”

The fourth-seeded Pates fell behind 4-0 in the first quarter against Emmaus and trailed 8-6 in the final frame and needed every last second of action to pull out the win, as Alex Greenberg scored his fourth-goal of the game with 27 seconds left to give Freedom the lead and eventual win.

Now they hope to roll that momentum through Del Val for an opportunity to play for their first championship.

“We haven’t talked about reaching the finals,” said Fabrizio of the team’s mindset coming into the semifinals. “We’re focused on playing Del Val. We keep telling our kids that there’s not a Thursday game if you don’t win Tuesday.”

Should Freedom win, they would move to Thursday’s championship against either third-seeded Parkland or second-seeded Easton.

The Freedom girls saw their season come to an end last week in the district playoffs, falling to Parkland 12-11 in the 3A quarterfinals.

Parkland’s Kaz Kennedy scored the game winner with 1:27 left to propel the Trojans to the semifinal round. Paige Jenkins led the Pates with five goals on the night.

The Freedom girls ended their season with an 11-6 record.