The bus ride from Catasauqua’s Alumni Field to Salisbury High School isn’t really that long, but it probably went extremely fast for the Lady Falcons field hockey team after they won the program’s first District 11 championship in Catasauqua on Wednesday night.

The 2-0 win came against the perennially tough Southern Lehigh Spartans, a team that Salisbury had faced twice in the regular season before meeting up in districts.

The result was an exact mirror image of last year’s championship game when the Spartans beat the Falcons 2-0.

From that point on, the players decided they needed to make this season be the one where they went from silver medals to gold, or as they say: leveled up.

“This is what they wanted,” said Salisbury head coach Jane Brennan. “This is what they wanted to do. They put in the work and worked very hard all season and got the result that they wanted. This is all because of the work that they did.”

The Southern Lehigh defense gave Salisbury a difficult time all game long and allowed just three shots on goal.

The one area where Salisbury was able to find some holes in the defense was in defending penalty corners. The Falcons turned five corners into two of their shots on goal and both went past goalie Corinne Houck.

The game was scoreless until late in the second quarter when Salisbury was awarded a corner.

Senior Gwyn DeFazio was the inserter on the play and sent the ball to one of the players closest to her, junior Ellie Schneider. The shot traveled from the right side of the goal to the far left side and went in just behind the post of the goal to give Salisbury a 1-0 lead.

The next corner opportunity for Salisbury came in the third quarter with the same two players looking to strike again.

This time Schneider’s shot bounced off Houck and DeFazio, who had anticipated the play, was in the right place at the perfect time to play the carom past Houck for some breathing room with a 2-0 lead.

“Most of the time you’re just looking to get the shot on cage and have someone take it from there,” said Schneider. “Gwyn is such a strong shooter, I had no doubt that she was going to get that one in.”

From there, it was the Salisbury defense that had to stand tall and with the added luxury of the two-goal lead, its job was a little easier than it might have been.

While Southern Lehigh dominated play early in the game, its offense was unable to find many opportunities in the second half.

Of the six shots on goal for the Spartans, only two came after the first quarter of play. Senior goalkeeper Caroline Gedney turned away all six of Southern Lehigh’s shots on goal to record her 15th shutout of the season.

Salisbury players suffered two key defeats this season that stayed with them and helped to inspire them for the district championship game.

Southern Lehigh tripped up Salisbury 2-1 in the final regular season game of the year to hand the Falcons their first loss of the season. The other loss came in the Colonial League semifinals when Northwestern eliminated Salisbury in a 3-2 game.

“They took everything from both of those games, and they built on it, and our practices were definitely geared to what was going to happen next,” said Brennan. “They had to put all the pieces together and they did.”

In the opening round of states, Salisbury (19-2-0) faced Harriton (15-6-1), the third place team from District 1, at Salisbury High School Tuesday. (See next week’s Press for coverage of the state playoff game.)

With only one team from the 2A classification in District 11 reaching states, Southern Lehigh’s season came to an end with a 17-5-1 record.