The Northampton girls soccer team has had an interesting split in their performance against Easton over the last five years depending on which type of playing surface the contest takes place.

On artificial turf, 3 games at Northampton and 1 on Easton’s turf field, the K-Kids are 2-2 with a minus 4 goal differential. On the Rovers’ grass field, they are 0-4 and a minus 17.

That contrast did not bode well for Northampton as they traveled east on Monday to take on the Rovers in the EPC quarterfinals on their natural playing surface.

Easton scored a minute and a half into the game and added another goal just 5 minutes later to create a dour situation on the scoreboard that was shortly thereafter matched by the weather as a persistent rain soaked everyone in attendance and assured that the white Northampton kits would go home full of grass stains.

The Rovers added another goal before halftime to make the score 3-0 at intermission.

The K-Kids came out of halftime playing well and started generating some scoring chances. They finally broke through when Anne Beenders knocked home a cross from Olivia Abrachinsky with 29 minutes left in the game to narrow the deficit to 3-1.

Northampton continued to generate pressure for the next 10 minutes and Emma Fry made several key saves to keep the hopes of a comeback alive. However, Easton scored in the 66th and 69th minutes to put the game out of reach by what would be the final score, 5-1.

Head coach Michael Missmer reflected, “When Easton has our number, they have our number big. It’s one of those things that we’ll have to go back to the drawing board and figure it out for districts.” He added, “We made a couple of switches after the half and that was our best 20 minutes, but it’s an 80-minute game. You can’t have just a good 20 minutes and expect to win.”

The K-Kids will next take the field in districts on Wednesday. The setting should provide for some better vibes as the team will go to Nazareth. Northampton knocked the Blue Eagles out of the district tournament last year with a 1-0 win at Andrew S Leh Stadium.

The EPC released its All-Star teams on Tuesday. Junior Emma Fry was named first team goalkeeper. Chloe Watson earned second team honors as a midfielder. Iasiah Kirk was selected as a third team defender.