Just moments after his Liberty boys soccer team tied Bethlehem rival Freedom 1-1 on Thursday night at Bethlehem Area School District Stadium, Hurricanes coach Jason Horvath received the score of the Nazareth-Northampton match.

It was not good news for Horvath and Liberty.

Northampton edged Nazareth 2-1 Thursday night, meaning the Konkrete Kids earned the Lehigh Valley Conference's wild-card berth and No. 4 seed for next week's conference tournament.

Liberty and Northampton both finished 8-4-2 in LVC action, but Northampton claimed the playoff spot over Liberty thanks to the head-to-head tiebreaker. The K-Kids defeated the Hurricanes 2-0 on Oct. 1.

"We wanted to control our own destiny, of course," Horvath said. "And we could've done that by winning. But we're not in the conference playoffs and now we need to focus on the District 11 tournament."

On Freedom's side, the double-overtime tie was terrific news. Rookie coach Michael O'Connell's Patriots completed an extremely successful turnaround (regular) season. Freedom is now 11-5-2 overall and 10-3-1 in the LVC, one year after finishing with a 4-13-1 record.

Freedom clinched the East Division title with Thursday's tie.

"This was a playoff-type environment and that's how I wanted our kids to treat it," said O'Connell, a longtime assistant coach at Lehigh University. "I thought we started slow but I'm proud of the way our kids responded down 1-0."

North Division champion Parkland will be the top seed and play Northampton on Tuesday at Whitehall High School in the LVC semifinals. Second-seeded Emmaus, the West Division champion, meets Freedom at J. Birney Crum Stadium in the other conference semifinal set for Tuesday. Both matches start at 5:30 p.m.

Liberty scored the first goal of the match on Senior Night with 14:13 remaining in the first half. Tresor Butoyi drilled a shot into the back of the net off a pass from Colin Muller.

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Freedom ties Liberty 1-1 but wins division title