It has been a while since the Northwestern Lehigh softball team played in the Colonial League final four. So long that head coach Josh Zimmerman couldn’t remember when asked. They last won a league title in 2006.

After a 5-2 victory over Salisbury in the quarterfinals last Saturday morning, the Tigers were squared up against top seed Bangor.

Two rough innings did Northwestern in.

A three-run third and a three-run sixth was all the Slaters (21-2 overall) needed in securing a 6-0 win Tuesday night in the second of two Colonial League semifinals at Pates Park.

Bangor heads to the title game to take on Catasaqua, a 2-1 winner over Palmerton in the earlier game.

“Give Bangor a lot of credit, they earned that win,” said Zimmerman. “We didn’t give them anything. They just had a lot of key hits. We had some opportunities some innings to score runs, but didn’t capitalize, and that’s what gets you.

“But the girls battled all the way until the end. I told them to get to this point, they should be proud of themselves.”

The Slaters scored their six runs on eight hits, but had six of those hits in the critical third and sixth innings when they tallied all of their runs.

Lydia Danner worked through the first two innings unscathed, but in the bottom of the third, five runners reached safely. Bangor took the 3-0 lead when Allison Phillips had an RBI double, Dani Fey drove in a run with a sacrifice fly and Ciarrah Holmqvist stayed in a rundown between first and second long enough to allow Nikki Kessler to score.

The Tigers had an opportunity to cut into the lead in the top of the sixth inning. Alyssa Cinquemani reached on an error, then Brooke Wehr and Jess Badman followed with singles to load the bases with one out.

Bangor pitcher Erin Happel got the next two hitters out to preserve the shutout.

Happel walked none, struck out five and worked around three Slaters errors.

Ally Shook doubled in three runs in the bottom of the sixth to break it open.

“We have to learn from this,” said Zimmerman. “We have to get back to situational hitting, and making our outs productive. We need to get runners on base and in scoring position, and then bring them in consistently. I was worried about the pressure of the big game on them, and it looked like they might have been timid.”

Northwestern will now look to bounce back in the District 11 tournament which will begin next week.