Games between Emmaus and Pleasant Valley are becoming a hot ticket in girls lacrosse.

The teams met in the regular season finale with the Bears winning 9-5 and then met again in the playoffs, vying for the EPC championship where Pleasant Valley again came out on top with a 7-3 victory for it’s second straight league title win over the Hornets.

Pleasant Valley took advantage of an Emmaus penalty to get a free position play and Devon Bush scored for a 1-0 lead. From there, Emmaus seemed to take the game over and moved to a 3-1 lead after senior Emily Hollinger and juniors Olivia Schmidt and Jordyn Poll scored goals for the Hornets.

The problem for Emmaus was it was handed two early yellow cards, one each for Bri McClain and Natalie McKiernan, which forced the Hornets to play a slightly different game.

“Getting two yellow cards early made us make adjustments because you can’t continue to get them and play down for the rest of the game,” said Emmaus coach Roxann Betz.

Emmaus maneuvered around the penalties and kept Pleasant Valley from taking advantage of playing with a one player advantage. Later in the first half though the Bears found ways to score and tied the game 3-3 with just :07 left on the clock before halftime.

Pleasant Valley used the break to put together a different scheme on defense and it made a difference in the second half in slowing down Emmaus and opening opportunities for the Pleasant Valley offense. In the first minute of the second half, the Bears went up 4-3 on a goal from Riley Green. Bush picked up her second goal and Green added her second after that to build a 6-3 lead.

The early penalties came back to bite the Hornets when McClain picked up her second yellow card with 6:57 left in regulation and was out of the game. With 2:49 left to play, Rylee Rath added her second goal of the game to give more insurance to Pleasant Valley.

“They switched their defense at halftime, and we were used to it because it was our original defense, but we just weren’t aggressive,” said Betz.