Northwestern Lehigh picked up its 12th win of the season Tuesday night in a strong 5-1 win over Palisades.

Five different players scored goals for the Tigers. The win puts Northwestern at 7-1 in the Colonial League, just behind Southern Lehigh (8-0-1) and just ahead of Salisbury (6-1-0).

The Tigers’ only loss of the season came at the hands of Southern Lehigh, while Salisbury’s only loss came against Northwestern.

Jillian Fink had a big night for Northwestern, opening the scoring with a goal with 15 minutes left in the first half. Fink went on to assist on the other two goals the Tigers scored in the next six minutes, the first by Alexa Bleam and the next by Olivia Motolese. It was Motolese who picked up the assist on Fink’s goal to get things started.

“We didn’t come out quite as strong as we would have liked, but we definitely picked up the intensity and started to find some holes and get some open looks,” said Northwestern head coach Kelly Bleam.

Northwestern stretched the lead to 5-0 in the second half when Kylie Zentz and Sophia Motolese both got in on the scoring, with Jenna Lowthert assisting on Zentz’ goal with 31 minutes left to play. Palisades picked up its lone goal of the game with just over seven minutes left to play when Cassie Mitsch unloaded on just the third shot of the game for the Lady Pirates and put it in the back of the net.

Northwestern went almost 160 minutes between giving up goals from when it gave up the game-winner with 27 minutes left against Southern Lehigh until Mitsch’s goal. In between were shutout wins over Moravian Academy (8-3-0 overall, 6-3-0 Colonial) and Pen Argyl (5-6-0, 2-6-0), both ending in a 4-1 score.

Northwestern has allowed just eight goals in 13 games this season. The 2-1 loss to Southern Lehigh was the only time this season that the Tigers have allowed more than one goal in a game.

“There’s no doubt that our defense has been a big part of the story this season,” said Kelly Bleam. “We’ve worked hard to improve defensively and make it difficult on other teams to even get into a position where they have an open look. The girls have all worked hard on that and they deserve a lot of credit.”

Stressing the play of the defense is not to say that the Tigers can’t handle themselves offensively. They’ve averaged over four goals a game this season.

“We lost a lot of offense from last season so we weren’t quite sure how well we could do offensively this year,” said Kelly Bleam. “That’s where the younger girls who have stepped in have done a good job and have worked to make the offense strong. You always worry when you lose as many goals as we did because of graduation, but it’s worked out well.”

The Tigers are down to their final five games of the regular season. The stretch begins with a game this afternoon at Notre Dame of Green Pond (5-4-1, 4-2-1) and continues with home games next Tuesday and Wednesday against Northern Lehigh (2-10-0, 1-9-0) and Holy Redeemer (7-2-0).

Northwestern has already clinched a spot in the District 11 Class 2A tournament and with one more win, will clinch a spot in the Colonial League playoffs, likely starting with a bye in round one.