The Parkland High School girls soccer team is one game away from a perfect record to finish off the 2022 regular season. While the unblemished mark may look and feel good for the program, head coach Al Haddad is hoping his team continues to remain hungry and humble with more difficult games lying ahead in the postseason.

“This season has been a challenge in that we lost so many of our toughest games by only playing those teams once with the current schedule,” said Haddad. “It’s created a whole new dynamic in trying to prepare the team for the postseason when players aren’t having the consistent tough games. We have been very healthy and getting great production from all the lines and all the players. So as far as how it is all going, great so far but I hope we can turn the intensity up when needed.”

A few short weeks ago, the Trojans (17-0 overall, 15-0 EPC) won back-to-back games by 1-0 scores, their only one-goal games all season, outside of a 3-2 win over Central Catholic in the third game of the year. Stroudsburg and Spring-Ford gave Parkland all it could handle.

“The girls answered the bell against Spring-Ford and that’s been our biggest test,” Haddad said. “Easton was a unique situation with a restart of a game and then tying it up at one, but the girls took control after that. We have Nazareth and Emmaus this week so we’ll see how we deal with the better teams there. Whether a difficult game or easier, we want to leave the game healthy and have learned something new about ourselves that we can apply to the next game or situation.”

The Trojans have a road game at Emmaus before opening the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference Tournament on Saturday. They are solidified as the one seed.

“Putting yourself in a position to compete for a championship is our permanent goal,” said Haddad. “With so many schools changing classification, the District 11 tournament will be different. Unfortunately we don’t see anyone new but rather another go around with someone we already played. We will be looking forward to seeing the girls compete when something greater is on the line which will tell us what we might be able to accomplish in the state tournament should we get that far.”