It would have been easy for Northampton fans attending the Kids’ girls district playoff game last Friday against Parkland to assume that they were there to give the seniors a nice sendoff in their final game in the Orange and Black.

After all, the Trojans had won the two regular season meetings between the EPC West rivals 58-30 and 40-28. However, the K-Kids extracted a measure of revenge for last year’s district title game as they exploded for their highest point total of the season and advanced 79-65.

Senior forward and EPC MVP Grace Lesko reflected on the win, “It was huge. Me and Nicole (Yellen) both had this game on our minds ever since last year. We’re doing for the girls last year and we’re doing it for us this year, beating Parkland and moving on.”

An atmosphere of tension pervaded Whitehall’s Dick Tracy Court as even as the Kids built 35-32 halftime lead into a 13-point advantage following the third quarter. The emotional scars of Parkland’s comeback from 19-2 down in 2022 were still fresh enough that no one on the Northampton side was ready to chalk up a win with 8 minutes still to play.

When the Trojans scored the first seven point of the fourth quarter as part of a 12-2 run to cut the Kids’ lead to 3, it would have easy to feel that the game had already slipped away, but Lesko put the team on her back, scoring 13 points down the stretch to send all the Northampton supporters home happy.

In her postgame comments, it was clear that last year’s game was still on Yellen’s mind. “All of us have thought about that game since it ended and we were really hoping to get this game especially because it was here where it happened. It was 19-8 at halftime last year and they came back, so we knew we had to go all four quarters.”

Head coach Jeff Jacksits said he felt the game was over when – “there were 6 seconds left and we had an 11-point lead.” Jacksits noted Lesko’s monster game (34 point, 12 rebounds) and spoke about the contributions of the rest of the squad, “We made some key baskets in the second half. Maddie Hurst knocked down those shots (8 points in the third quarter), that was big at the that time. We needed them. Yellen (19 points, 9 rebounds) played a lot better. That was a big difference from the last game against them. And Annie (Beenders) was chasing (Parkland star Talia) Zurinskas all over the court.”

Unfortunately, the Kids’ offensive resurgence was short-lived as they lost their semifinal contest to seventh-seeded Liberty 50-36 on Tuesday at Allen. The Hurricanes led 10-9 after 1, 23-18 at the half, and 35-24 after the third quarter.

Although the loss dashed Northampton’s hopes for a district title, it did not end their season. With three state bids for 6A from District XI, the Kids will play Nazareth in a consolation game on Friday for the third spot. Liberty will play Easton for the title. The game time and site had not been announced at the time of this writing.