Tuesday night’s matchup between the Northampton and Nazareth girls teams featured two squads with a combined 23-2-2 record on the season. The K-Kids were riding a 6-game winning streak, but the Blue Eagles defended their home turf in claiming a 2-1 overtime win.

The first half was played primarily in the Kids’ defensive end and Nazareth finally broke through at the 25:03 mark when Isabella Danise booted home a rebound off a Blue Eagles’ shot that had caromed off the bottom of the crossbar.

Head coach Michael Missmer explained the team’s early struggles, “We started out in a formation that wasn’t working against their 3-5-2. And it’s my fault for not training them to be able to switch on the fly, so we waited until halftime to switch and then things looked much better. I thought our defense did fantastic. I think our goalkeeper did fantastic. We just have to kind of work out the kinks in the 4-4-3 to get players forward.”

The change did yield a goal when Olivia Abrachinsky buried a penalty kick with 23:21 left in regulation, but offensive chances were few and far between. Unofficially, Nazareth outshot Northampton 22-3 for the game.

The Blue Eagles partisans in the press box could not stop expressing their admiration for Northampton goalkeeper Emma Fry, who kept the K-Kids in the contest in spite of the onslaught.

The Kids almost survived the first overtime period, but Danise scored the golden goal with 1:04 left in OT1.

The loss, while disappointing, is just a bump in the road on the way to the postseason for the 11-2-1 K-Kids who have secured berths in both the EPC and district tournaments.

The K-Kids have an opportunity to bounce back this evening when 5-9-1 Liberty comes to town. After that they travel to Bangor (11-2-1) on Saturday in a contest with the top-rated team in 3A. On Monday, they face off against Parkland (11-1-2) on the Trojans’ home turf. Their regular season comes to a close on Wednesday as they host rival Whitehall (9-6).

Northampton likely needs to sweep their three EPC contests to have a chance to host a quarterfinal game when the conference tournament starts October 15.