The Northwestern Lehigh girls volleyball team has hit the toughest part of its season schedule with its last three games.

The Lady Tigers had to go through Southern Lehigh, Nazareth and Blue Mountain in a five-day span. The three teams were able to hand Northwestern losses and deal a setback to the overall record of the team.

Only one of those teams is a Colonial League team and the Tigers still hold a strong position in their battle for their first Colonial League championship.

In playing Nazareth and Blue Mountain, the Tigers faced two nonleague games that gave them the opportunity to face teams with a good track record, which allowed them to gauge where their own program is at the current time.

The Tigers (9-2 Colonial, 9-6 overall) battled against Nazareth (8-7) before falling in the fifth set for a 3-2 loss. The teams split the first two sets with each team winning 25-17. The Blue Eagles took the third set 25-23 but Northwestern came right back and took the fourth set 25-19 before Nazareth took the final set 15-12 to get the win.

Blue Mountain came to New Tripoli and left with a straight-set win that could have gone either way with just a couple of key plays.

Blue Mountain won the opening set 25-24 and then took a 2-0 lead by winning the second set 25-23. Blue Mountain had an easier time in the closing set with a 25-16 win over Northwestern Lehigh.

The big showdown was against Southern Lehigh. The Spartans have ruled the Colonial League for a while, and they are attempting to run the table again this season with an 11-0 record both in the league and overall.

The three sets were similar to what happened against Blue Mountain with the Spartans taking a pair of close sets at 25-22 and 25-22 to open up their 2-0 advantage before closing out the match with a 25-17 win in the third set.

In the opening set, Northwestern came out being aggressive and were able to open up a bit of a lead, but Southern Lehigh continued to chip away at the lead and eventually took control of the set.

Southern Lehigh was the one having to defend their lead in the second set, but they were able to brush back the challenge from Northwestern and hang on to take the commanding lead.

“The girls played pretty hard today,” said Northwestern head coach Mike Maston. “The first set we were on top pretty heavily and had a lot of energy. A few mistakes that we made let them in the door and against a team like Southern you just can’t give them that door to get in.”

Size turned out to be a distinct advantage for Southern Lehigh, and they were able to use that to their advantage throughout the three sets.

“They’re a lot taller than we are up front,” said Maston. “But I think that we played them pretty solid up there and defensively, I think that we were right there with them, but they just have a few more weapons than we do right now.”

The upcoming schedule has another test with a rematch against Notre Dame of Green Pond, a team that Northwestern has slowly clawed away the early dominance that the Crusaders had over them in the early part of the Northwestern program.

The teams have been much closely matched over the past two seasons and the rematch will give the Tigers the opportunity to take both regular season games against Notre Dame.

After that Northwestern will host Lehighton this week before closing out the regular season against Palmerton and Pen Argyl next week. The Lady Tigers have beaten all three of those teams earlier in the season.

“The girls are getting more confident against these better teams,” said Maston. “I’m sure that Southern Lehigh was thinking ‘what’s going on here’ in those first two sets.

“We still have the opportunity to maybe meet them again somewhere in the league playoffs, too. We feel pretty confident about playing at Notre Dame. We’ve had pretty good matches with them down there the last couple of years and I think we might be able to get them at their place this time.”