In a rematch of a highly-competitive and exciting regular season game, the Emmaus High School football team got revenge against Easton as the fourth-seeded Hornets defeated the top-seeded Red Rovers 20-19 last Friday night in a District 11 6A football semifinal at Cottingham Stadium.

Emmaus (10-2 overall) advances to the District final for the third time in program history and is seeking its first district title.

The Hornets’ victory makes up for a 28-21 overtime defeat back on September 20. But since that night, Emmaus has rattled off seven straight wins, including Friday night’s victory.

“That was perfect, and I’m not kidding,” said Emmaus head coach Harold Fairclough. “I told our guys before the season, ‘it’s not going to look pretty for us early,’ just because of the lack of experience and some young guys at key positions.

“Then, as we went through it, we started getting banged up. We had a bunch of injuries. I was like, guys, we’re going to get there. We’ve just got to keep working, keep chipping away. We found things to fix, and we said, ‘if you guys commit to doing these things, we’re going to be hitting our stride week 10, 11, 12, 13.’ After week 5, they locked in. We’re right where we want to be right now.”

In a low-scoring first half, kicker Will Buck did all of the scoring for Emmaus with a 43-yard field goal in the first quarter for the only scoring either team would do in that period.

Buck added a 27-yard field goal to put his team ahead 6-0 early in the second quarter.

The Red Rovers answered with a six-yard touchdown run to take a 7-6 halftime lead.

The second half belonged to Reilly Bechtel as the senior’s 97-yard touchdown run gave the Hornets the lead once again at 13-7.

Easton tied it up with another rushing score. Bechtel then gave his team the lead for good with a three-yard touchdown run in the fourth quarter as Emmaus went on top 20-13.

Late in the game, however, Easton was on the verge of tying it once again or even taking the lead as a 29-yard touchdown pass from Cole Ordway to Jasir Frutchey put the score at 20-19.

The Red Rovers went for the two-point conversion and the win, but the pass attempt failed and Emmaus celebrated victory.

“I’m just proud of my guys, the energy, the effort and the guts that they played with,” Fairclough said. “It was just awesome to see. They really wanted it, they went after it, and they made timely plays. We talked at halftime that it was going to come down to about six plays in the second half and it did. I’m happy for them. They earned it. They earned this opportunity to play (Easton) again, and they took advantage of it.”

Bechtel rushed 20 times for 162 yards and the two scores. Jerek Cooper ran for 57 yards. Ben Jones caught three passes for 30 yards.

Emmaus will now meet the third seed, Parkland (10-2), in the district championship game on Friday night at Whitehall High School. The Hornets defeated the Trojans 27-0 in the regular season finale three weeks ago.