Jordan Smith’s first season as the coach of the Northwestern Lehigh girls’ soccer team has gone without much of a glitch. After serving as a longtime assistant under Kelly Bleam, Smith was ready to hit the ground running and led the team to a 9-0-1 Colonial League record and a 14-1-1 overall record this season. Both marks are good enough for spots in the league and district tournaments.

With just one regular season game remaining against Catasauqua (2-7-1, 5-10-1), the Lady Tigers have a shot at finishing the season with a nine-game winning streak, giving them plenty of momentum to roll into the postseason, which opens with Colonial League quarterinals on Saturday. The Tigers will likely have a bye in that round and open play in semifinals next week.

Northwestern’s most recent win came in a nonleague game against Liberty (6-8-0 EPC, 6-9-0 overall) with Northwestern taking a 3-0 win.

After the two teams fought through a scoreless first half, Camryn Fitch put Northwestern on top with a goal just seven minutes into the second half. The defensive battle continued until late in the half when the Lady Tigers got two quick goals, the first coming from senior Sophia Motolese and the second from her classmate Kaitlyn Browning.

“It’s always big to get a goal, especially the second one,” said Motolese of her second-half goal. “It gave us a good lead. It just came in and I squared off the cross for the goal.”

One of the factors for all the scoring coming in the second half could have been a stiff wind that the Tigers had blowing directly at them in the first half and at their backs in the second. Throughout the game, both teams saw passes and shots go off course because of the wind.

“I thought the first half we played phenomenal, but we couldn’t get as much on our shots and I think a lot of that was the wind,” said Smith. “Their keeper [Sophia Albino] is also very good and she made three excellent saves in the first half. We just kept coming and eventually got one to fall and open the floodgates.”

Liberty struggled throughout the game to get through a difficult Northwestern Lehigh defense. When they did, goalkeeper Naomi Glassberg turned away anything that came remotely close to the goal. The shutout was the 13th of the season for the Tigers.

A win over Catasauqua would wrap up the top seed in the league playoffs for Northwestern. They will be no lower than the top wild card team, which will guarantee them a bye in the first round of playoffs, which take place on Saturday. That would leave them hosting a semifinal game Tuesday at Tiger Stadium.

“I told the team after today’s game [the win over Liberty] that I thought today was our best all-around game we played,” said Smith. “Between combination player, physicality and winning 50-50 balls, we played a great game against a good Liberty team.”