ALLENTOWN - Coming into Saturday's contest against Parkland, Pleasant Valley had allowed just seven goals in eight games this season.

Because of that stingy defense, the Bears' game plan relied on shutting down the powerful Parkland offense and then getting a goal here or there to escape with a win.That might have worked, but the Trojans found an early hole in the Pleasant Valley defense and used it to get two quick goals to pick up a 3-1 win."We hoped to get a counter early or a set piece early and then set in. If we couldn't do that, then we were going to just sit in and defend and hopefully, maybe look to get a deflection or something, but giving up two early goals really hurt the grand scheme of it," said Bears' coach Chris Pachuta.Josh Kiser ruined the plan with a quick goal, and teammate Andrew Luchansky made things even tougher when he scored to put the Trojans up 2-0. Dawson Berger capped the scoring to give Parkland a 3-0 advantage going into the break."They're a really good team, and they start 11 seniors, and they're super deep, and there's no letdown for them. We wanted to game plan for certain things and take away certain things, and we did for the most part, but then because of the situation, we started to stretch out a little bit," said Pachuta.Pleasant Valley got one strong shot on goal in the opening half, but Jacob Varrato made the stop for Parkland.With just under 20 minutes to play and a 3-0 lead, Parkland pulled Varrato in favor of Matt Lytle. Five minutes later, Pleasant Valley was able to work inside and freshman Jake Alles fired on goal for the Bears' only score of the game."We did create a couple of chances, and maybe we weren't too good in another way. If we score on one of the set pieces, maybe the game is a little different," said Pachuta. "The kids worked hard, and we didn't back away from them."We were going to play a game plan to make it defensive and go for a counter-attack, and for the most part, we executed what we were trying to do."The loss dropped Pleasant Valley to 5-3-1 in both the EPC and overall, while Parkland moved to 7-0 in the EPC and 8-1 overall.MORE DEFENSE ... While Pleasant Valley's defense had been outstanding to start the season, Parkland's had been even better. The Trojans had allowed just two goals in their eight previous games. The only goals that Parkland allowed prior to Saturday came against South Kent during a two-game trip that the team took to Connecticut a week earlier.THE ROAD AHEAD ... Pleasant Valley has games against Northampton (2-4-1, 2-4-1), Central Catholic (6-1, 6-2) and Pocono Mountain East (3-4, 3-6) coming up on the schedule. The game against the Cardinals starts a run of five straight games against division rivals to wrap up the regular season. The Cards are the only division team to have beaten the Bears this season. "I think we're okay," said Pachuta. "This is the part of the season that gets a little bit tough, but we're creating chances. We've got to finish a little bit better. We've got to find a way to score more often."FIRING LINE ... Pachuta used two goalies in the game, with Chris Price making two saves and Noah Newbert stopping four shots.REALLY, YOU'RE WEARING THAT? ... While the two teams battled on the hot turf with temperatures touching 90-degrees, Pachuta marched the sideline in a long-sleeve shirt. The impressive part was that he barely broke a sweat.