A year ago, Emmaus girls soccer head coach Sarah Oswald was bringing a relatively inexperienced team into the season. The Hornets came together well as a group and finished with a strong 12-8 record. They reached the district semifinals where they lost to Parkland 4-1.

This year, the squad is more experienced and certainly battle-tested as it looks to build on last year’s success and take the next step into the district finals.

Senior Maddi Woodward talked about the hard work that the team has put in during training and believes it is going to be able to turn that hard work into results once the season gets underway. Oswald echoed the thoughts and credits the senior leaders with setting the example of how things need to be done.

“The kids show up with more energy every day to train and their presence on the field has been great and I credit our leadership with creating that culture,” said Oswald. “With kids like Maddi Woodward, Paige Inman, Mya Cooper and Sam Kreiner to set the tone and the expectations, it’s really hard for kids not to follow that.”

Emmaus and North Penn tied in a recent scrimmage game with the Hornets giving up a late goal making it a 2-2 game. The takeaways from the game were that the team played well and appears ready to go for the 2022 season after having a successful camp leading up to the school year.

Last season, Parkland was an obvious obstacle for the Hornets in their quest for championships in the East Penn Conference and District 11. The two rivals met in the semifinals in both tournaments and the Lady Trojans won both meetings and went on to win both titles before being eliminated in the first round of states.

This season, Hornets players – especially the seniors – have picked up their championship dreams right where they left off last year. These seniors know the feeling of playing in a championship game since they went to the EPC championship as freshmen. Their goal is to go back to give them appearances in both their first and last seasons of high school soccer.

“I obviously want to play my best and help my teammates to all get better and have good seasons,” said Woodward. “I hope to be one of the leaders of our team that helps us get back to the EPC championship and then go even further. That’s my biggest goal for the year.”

Sometimes, the problem comes with getting younger players mixed into the chemistry that has already been formed between the upperclassmen. On this team though, that has not been a problem even though the senior group is very bonded, they have made room for younger players.

“Paige (Inman) and I have been on varsity for the past four years together, so we are very tight,” said Woodward. “The whole team is pretty tightly bonded and we have a bunch of new girls who have fit in really well and we are getting to be really close with them. I think that chemistry will be an important part of our team this season.”

Oswald is coming into her eighth season as the team’s head coach and is happy with what she is seeing as the season approaches. She sees the well-bonded and talented senior group of players and the young, ready to go players with a strong group of additions from last year’s JV squad and believes that the depth can be a strength for this team.

“We have a ton of juniors that are joining us from the JV team and they had two really solid years with that group and already have a lot of experience. They need to just not skip a beat and come on to varsity and be ready to play and give us quality minutes,” said Oswald.