The Lady Tiger softball team sat through rainy weather waiting to see who it would play in the Colonial League semifinals. Palmerton and Wilson finally got the chance to play, with the Blue Bombers coming out on top to advance to the semis and a meeting with Northwestern Lehigh.

As the top seed in the tournament, Northwestern was a favorite. The teams split their two regular season meetings with the Tigers winning the last matchup after dropping a 6-1 game early in the season.

What happened next was somewhat unexpected. As it turned out, the biggest problem Northwestern had was that it had to face one of the hottest pitchers around in Lexi Merkel. In the two previous games against the Tigers, Merkel noticed their penchant to swing at high pitches and she rode that strategy to a 3-0 win in helping her team advance to the league championship game against Notre Dame (Green Pond).

Merkel struck out 13 batters as part of a stretch where she struck out 60 batters in four games. The first 13 Northwestern batters went down in order until Ashley Sisco singled on a line drive to right center field in the fifth inning.

Down 1-0 at the time, Tiger head coach Josh Zimmerman looked to produce a run and had Olivia Stofflet drop a bunt. The problem was that third baseman Amanda Lalik was anticipating the move and made a diving grab on the bunt for the second out, holding Sisco at first. Merkel picked up a strikeout to finish off the inning and the Tigers didn’t get another hit the rest of the way. Merkel didn’t walk a batter in the win.

“She kept us off balance,” said Zimmerman. “Give her all the credit in the world. Sshe’s a gamer and she does a great job for them. I was a little bit disappointed. I felt like our girls were a little bit in our own heads and not being aggressive enough up there.”

Emily Akelaitis pitched a strong game for Northwestern. She gave up a first-inning home run to Paige Shupp in the first, but Palmerton couldn’t push another run across until the sixth when it opened the inning with back-to-back singles. One out later, Megan Green blooped a ball into left field to plate one run and a groundball to second added another to make it 3-0. From there, Akelaitis set down the next batter and then pitched an uneventful seventh.

“You’ll have these types of games along the line,” said Zimmerman. “It’s just that at this point, they mean a little bit more than they do in the regular season. Now, we’ve just got to move on and prepare for districts.”

Based on their district power ranking, Northwestern held on to the top seed in the District 11 Class 4A playoffs. Just like in the league playoffs, the Lady Tigers sat out the first-round waiting to see who they would play. Their opponent will be Tamaqua, the fifth seed, which emerged from first-round play with an 8-4 win over Wilson. The game is set for 3 p.m. Thursday at De Sales University. The winner of that game will play the winner of the Bethlehem Catholic-Blue Mountain game, which will be played at Pine Grove Thursday.

Tamaqua finished the regular season 12-8, including a nonconference win over Northwestern back on April 3 in a 10-6 game. The Blue Raiders finished the season 13-8 overall and 8-6 in the Schuylkill League.