Northwestern Lehigh looked to end its second season of games with a win, but a strong start from Southern Lehigh put the Tigers behind early and they were unable to play catch-up, suffering a 6-1 setback to the Spartans.

The loss finished the Northwestern season at 5-12, leaving them short of reaching districts in what coach Marcus Janda called “their second first season,” referring to the fact that the lacrosse program began in 2019 and had last season wiped out by the pandemic.

Southern Lehigh’s Troy Scozzafava scored the first goal of the game with 10:31 left in the first quarter and then picked up his second just :54 later. Between the two goals was one from Cooper Nelson as the Spartans (9-5) opened up with a 3-0 lead. Just slightly over three-minutes later, Colin Duffy made it 4-0 and Janda had seen enough and called a timeout. From that point on, the two teams played a much more even contest, but it was too late for the Tigers to salvage the game.

“We normally have a pretty good defense but we got off to a rough start today,” Janda said. “The problem has been that we have a very young offense and they were facing a tough goalie and we couldn’t get in any real offensive rhythm.”

The second quarter went by without any scoring as did most of the third quarter before Nelson scored his second goal of the game to make it a 5-0 game. Duffy scored his second goal of the evening just past the midway point of the fourth quarter to stretch the lead to 6-0.

The Tigers avoided the shutout when junior Andrew Sabo worked his way directly in front of the net and fired a shot past goalie Vince Probst.

“We saw players make a lot of development as the season went on and overall, I’m happy with the season that we had,” said Janda. “The won-loss record wasn’t exactly where we wanted it to be, but if you would have told me in the beginning of the season that we were taking a team like Parkland to the wire, and played a team like Easton to the wire, and have opportunities to beat a team like Nazareth, I would have told you that was pretty awesome.”

Southern Lehigh earned a spot in the District 11 playoffs with the win. Meanwhile, Northwestern won’t qualify for districts. Their fate was seemingly sealed with a double overtime loss to Moravian Academy on Thursday.

Janda had plenty of praise for his seniors. “I told our guys after the game that one day this program will be a championship caliber team and we’ll hoist a district championship trophy at some point. These guys won’t be on those teams but I’ll make sure those teams recognize who laid the foundation for this program and that’s our senior class walking off the field here tonight,” said Janda of the team’s promising future.

Northwestern is a bit of an anomaly among area teams. Most teams’ attackers are among the more experienced players on the field, but the Tigers, started three underclassmen on their offensive unit this season.