High school teams don’t have much better weeks than the one just turned in by the Northwestern Lehigh boys soccer team. The Tigers not only went 3-0 with wins over Moravian Academy (10-1-0 overall, 7-1-0 Colonial), Pen Argyl (4-4-1, 3-4-0) and Palisades (4-8-0, 3-5-0), but they also shutout their opponents in each of the games, outscoring them 14-0. When combined with a scoreless tie against Southern Lehigh on September 17, Northwestern now has four straight shutouts.

The biggest win of the week came against Moravian Academy, which came into the game undefeated with an 8-0-0 record and left with the Tigers handing them their first loss.

Northwestern jumped out to a quick lead on a goal by Ryan Baker just five minutes into the game and made it 2-0 when Baker picked up his second of the day later in the first half.

Luke Bryan took over the scoring in the second half when he notched three goals, the last two coming just two minutes apart as Northwestern made it look easy in a 5-0 win.

“That was a big win for us,” said Tiger head coach Nate Hunsicker. “We needed that one, because we hadn’t been playing our best soccer at the time and that got us straightened out pretty quickly. Whenever you get those wins over teams like that it just builds the confidence level of your team up pretty quickly.”

The Tigers came back two days later and downed Pen Argyl by an identical 5-0 score, with Baker and Bryan adding goals in that win as well. Jason Blaine and Brandon Golas picked up goals for Northwestern in the second half of the game.

“Ryan and Luke are both playing really well right now and they’ve come up big for us in a couple games,” said Hunsicker. “The whole team has kind of come together and they’re playing pretty well and doing the little things we need to do to win.”

In the win over Palisades, the Tigers got two goals from Josh Zellner and one each from Jeff Garcia and Phillip Taylor. Mason Brensinger had two assists and Baker added one.

With a 4-2-1 record in the Colonial League, the Tigers are in a battle to make the league playoffs. As things stand now, they would be the final team to qualify for the tournament, but Palisades, Pen Argyl and Bangor are all just one win behind them, highlighting just how important the wins over the Pirates and Green Knights were this week.

“Every game definitely matters,” said Hunsicker. “We don’t want to just slide into the playoffs or make it because another team stumbled down the stretch. We need to keep winning. You always want to be playing your best soccer late in the season.”

With an 8-3-2 overall record, Northwestern should be in good shape to qualify for the District 11 playoffs as well, but they need to keep adding to the win total to guarantee the highest seeding possible for the tournament.

The Tigers have Notre Dame of Green Pond (8-2-0, 6-2-0), Catasauqua (5-8-0, 3-7-0) and Northern Lehigh (1-11-0, 0-8-0) on the schedule over the next week.

“We’ve got a couple of teams chasing us and we’ve got a couple of teams that we’re chasing in both the league and in districts, so it’s going to be very interesting to see what happens down the stretch,” said Hunsicker. “We had a rough stretch early in the year and now we have to make up for it.”