A sunny Saturday afternoon contest against Pocono Mountain West provided a brief respite for the Northampton girls soccer team with the contest coming sandwiched between games against EPC powers Central, Emmaus, and Easton who are a combined 29-3-2 on year.

As expected, the Panthers provided very little resistance as the Kids scored 6 first half goals on their way to a 7-0 win. Offensively Northampton took its foot off the gas in the second half, but defensively they continued to work hard and held PM West without a shot on goal for the entire 80 minutes.

Olivia Abrachinski opened the scoring by slipping a shot past the Panthers’ keeper 8 minutes and 16 seconds into the game.

That opened the floodgates as the Kids scored 4 more times over the next 10 and half minutes to blow the game open.

At 28:24 Danika Cuchran unleashed a high, curling shot that evaded the outstretched hands of West’s goalie. Anne Beenders scored her first goal of the season off a perfect feed on a free kick by Lindsay Reimer at the 21:54 mark.

Beenders added to her tally 91 seconds later to give the Kids a 4-0 advantage. Abrachinski and Cuchran had the final two goals of the first half. Cuchran completed her hat trick with a goal with 7:29 left in the game.

Not including the results of Wednesday’s game against Easton, which comes after Press deadline, Northampton is 6-5-1 for the season and 5-5-1 in the EPC.

Head coach Michael Missmer assessed the team’s status.

“We knew that we had to put it in the bank early because we could have a section in the middle where if we had some injuries we might struggle,” he said. “I kind of feel that’s where we are. My gut is that we’ll come full circle and get back to where we were before the tournament starts.”

The Kids’ next four opponents: Dieruff, Freedom, Bangor, and East Stroudsburg South all have losing records so far in 2022. The regular season finale at home against Whitehall on Oct. 12 has the potential to have district and EPC playoff bids on the line.

The team’s season stat leaders through Monday’s game at Emmaus are: Cuchran (11 goals, 2 assists), Abrachinsky (8g, 4a), Chloe Watson (6g, 5a), Brielle Szoke (2g, 1a), Beenders (2g), Lilly Konya (1g, 2a), Michelle Hlinka (1g, 1a), Brooke Petraglia (1 g), Jordyn Smolenak (2a), Saige Korpics, Sarah Mele, Lindsay Reimer, and Brianna Caulwell all have 1 assist.