After beating a couple of the EPC’s lesser lights, Bethlehem Catholic and Pleasant Valley, by a combined 15-1 in their first two games of the season, the Northampton field hockey team played a benchmarking contest against Parkland last Thursday.

The Trojans defended their home turf and turned away the K-Kids by a score of 4-1.

Head coach Carrie Saul assessed the performance, “We knew going in that this was going to be a difficult game. They returned a lot of players from last year. They’re tenacious. We made some key mistakes in not playing the ball until the whistle. Hopefully we learn from it. We’ll be able to move on. We see them again at the end of September and I’m looking forward to it.”

While the score was a bit lopsided, it was not a case of Northampton being totally outclassed. In the first half, both teams had approximately equal possession in their offensive zones and generated a couple of scoring chances. Parkland had three corners to the Kids’ two.

Anna Sensinger’s goal during the run of play at the 5:25 mark of the first period was the only score of the half and the Trojans led 1-0 after 30 minutes.

The K-Kids earned an early corner to start the second and generated a shot on goal, but it felt like the last 12 minutes of the third period were played almost entirely inside Northampton’s defensive 25-yard line. Parkland got a goal from Maya Zaun at the 4:47 mark and Sensinger scored a back breaker on a corner with just 33 seconds left in the quarter to make the score 3-0.

The Kids stepped up their effort in the fourth quarter and it bore some early fruit as Ella Steirer scored at 10:27 with an assist from Kendall Iasiello. They earned a corner 30 seconds later but could not dent the Trojans’ defense.

Avrie Arnfeldt added Parkland’s final goal with 1:20 left in the game.

Northampton bounced back from the loss with an 8-1 nonconference win against Northern Lehigh on Saturday and had an important 3-0 victory against Stroudsburg on Tuesday, snapping a two-game losing streak to the Lady Mounties.

This afternoon, the K-Kids have their annual game against Emmaus, who have won every District XI AAA field hockey title since 1988. On Tuesday, the squad heads to Whitehall for a game under lights for the first of the two regular season meetings between the schools this season.