Last week’s Salisbury boys soccer schedule got moved around a little with rain wiping out a meeting with Palmerton and a game against Pen Argyl being pushed back a day from Thursday to Friday leaving the Falcons to face the Green Knights one afternoon and defending state champion Northwestern Lehigh the next morning.

The trip to Pen Argyl (3-7-1 Colonial, 6-7-1 overall) saw the Falcons taken out by the Knights in a 3-1 loss.

“We have a tough time playing 80 minutes of soccer,” said coach Barry Frick. “We always seem to have a 15 or 20 minute span where we don’t hustle and get out of our formations and it costs us. We could have won that game, but we lost focus on what we need to do to win, and they came back and beat us.”

The next day Northwestern came to town and Salisbury had trouble from the opening whistle on. The Tigers were putting constant pressure on the Salisbury defense and just over five minutes in, Northwestern got their first goal from Logan Mesics, who recorded a hat trick over the next 2:33 of the game with teammate Cole Mertz adding another goal just :51 after Mesics’ first. By the time the first half was at the midway point, Northwestern had a 5-0 lead and stretched that to 7-0 by the end of the half.

“Our work rate could have been a bit better today,” said Frick. “We just didn’t hustle and we lost our shape, got out of position, and were reacting instead of being proactive. We did have some good combinations and did some good things, but we really didn’t start to do the things that we need to do until the last 20 minutes.”

In the final 20 minutes Salisbury (2-7, 3-9) was able to put some pressure on Tiger goalie Logan Heeps but were unable to put a shot past him. The exception came when Northwestern was called for a tripping penalty in the box, giving the Falcons a penalty kick. Christian Marinos had Heeps leaning the wrong way and added what would be the lone goal for Salisbury.

“We have some games coming up that are all doable,” said Frick of the upcoming schedule. “We have our senior night here (at home) against Catasauqua and then we travel up to Palmerton the next day. If we play our game, we hustle, and play our formations, we should be able to win those games and maybe get another win here or there.”

The remaining schedule has the Senior Night game against the Rough Riders (2-8-1, 3-10-1) on Wednesday and the trip to Palmerton (3-7, 4-9) on Thursday. The Falcons then play at Moravian Academy (6-2-1, 8-4-1) before wrapping up the season next week.