Emmaus wins emotional game, advances to state semifinals
Emmaus defeated Honesdale 7-0 in a PIAA Class 3A quarterfinal field hockey game Saturday afternoon at East Stroudsburg South’s Purple Pit to advance to a semifinal matchup Tuesday against Wilson of District 3 at a site and time to be determined.
But that wasn’t the important news coming out of the Green Hornets camp this week.
Emmaus (25-0) played the game with a No. 32 jersey draped on the bench in honor of teammate Hailey Cook, who received a leukemia diagnosis this week. Cook has been a valuable contributor for the Hornets with 11 goals and seven assists.
“This game was dedicated to [Cook],” Emmaus coach Sue Butz-Stavin said. “She was diagnosed with leukemia on Wednesday. The doctors told her that, come spring, she’s going to be back playing. We hope for the best for her.”
After a relatively slow start that led to Honesdale (17-4) getting the first two penalty corners, Emmaus got rolling with goals from Autumn Kenechel and Ava Zerfass. Zerfass, Melea Weber and Rachel Herbine scored before the half to make it 5-0.
Autumn Held and Weber scored in the third quarter. Herbine now has 49 goals this season. Weber has 37, Zerfass 27, Kernechel eight and Held five.
Junior goalkeeper Emma Cari made 10 saves to record her 18th shutout of the season.
“We’ve worked really hard and improved a lot, “said Held, a junior defender on the left side and an inserter on penalty corners. “We definitely feed off of that energy once we get our first goal. We get more energy and we feed off of that. We encourage each and we’re there for each other. We help each other out.”
Emmaus has been in a state semifinal for 13 straight years, dating back to 2010. The Green Hornets have won 69 straight games, including the last two PIAA titles, their 13th and 14th overall.
“It’s really exciting getting to these games and playing this far into the season,” said Kernechel, a sophomore midfielder. “It’s going to be a challenge. Every team is going to play its best against us. We have to be ready for that.”
Wilson, the second-place team from District 3, defeated Emmaus 1-0 in the 2019 state semifinals, one of only three losses that Emmaus has suffered since the beginning of the 2015 season. Since 2015, the Green Hornets have a 203-3 record.
Butz-Stavin said that some players have been dealing with respiratory infections, limiting their practice time, but despite them, the play on the field has not suffered.
“I’m proud of how we took the field,” she said. “It was a little bit of an auspicious start there with ball possession. We worked our way out of it. Honesdale has a couple speedsters on their team. They challenged us. We really had to pick up ball speed and foot speed. Once we did that we played well.”
Some advice from assistant Laree Beans also helped.
“Coach Beans told the kids they really need to get rebounds, and they did,” Butz-Stavin said. “We weren’t pounding enough. With us doing that, it created some options.”