The heat from Sam Seyfried’s foot challenged the heat of the day Tuesday as the Northwestern boys soccer team opened up defense of its Colonial League and District 11 Championships with a 7-1 win over Salisbury.

Seyfried, a senior, scored four goals in the game to pace the Tigers.

As the two teams rallied back and forth to start the game, you could see Northwestern figure things out and go to work. Just 17-minutes into the game, Seyfried scored his first goal and from there, the goals came in a pretty rapid succession. About five minutes after Seyfried put Northwestern up 1-0, Caleb Danner tallied his first goal of the season. Seyfried then took over, scoring the next two goals, the second on a beautiful assist from Jeff Garcia, his first of two in the game, putting the Tigers up 4-0 at the half.

Seyfried scored his third straight goal just two minutes into the second half to put Northwestern up 5-0. Zach Creighton played a beautiful header with 33:31 left to play and made it 6-0. The Northwestern scoring was wrapped up when sophomore Seth Brady scored with 28-minutes left in the game.

Salisbury’s Prince Radande scored with 15:35 left in the game for the lone Falcons’ score.

The frenzy wasn’t completely unexpected by Seyfried.

“I’m not saying that we’re going to score seven goals every game, but I’m not saying that we’re not going to either,” he said. “We have a good offense and we’re going to be capable of putting a lot of points on the board this season.”

In addition to his goal, Creighton added two assists. Luke Bryan and Ryan Baker also added assists for Northwestern.

Meanwhile, goalie Austin Vogwill was generally unchallenged by the Salisbury offense. Zach Rosamalia came on in relief later in the game and Salisbury did get some stronger shots on goal and even sneaked a shot past him for their lone goal of the game.

Seyfried pointed out that the team will be challenged by an early season schedule that has them playing five straight days this week. The Tigers have a nonconference game at Pennridge and then host Palmerton. Friday they’re at Wilson and then travel to Hamburg on Saturday to play Solanco in another nonconference game.

“I think we’re going to be very good again this season,” Seyfried said. “We’ve got a lot of guys back and the younger guys are really working hard to fill any holes, so I’m excited. The weather will make this week a little tougher but we’ll OK.”

“This week is going to tell us a lot of things,” said coach Nate Hunsicker. “It’s going to be a tough stretch, especially with the weather being as hot as it is. It was good to be able to use the whole roster today to give some guys a bit of a breather because it’s going to be a tough week.”