Salisbury is inserting itself among the better field hockey programs in the Colonial League and in doing so the Falcons have developed somewhat of a rivalry with Northwestern Lehigh, a perennial top team.

The Falcons met the Tigers in the league championship last season and Northwestern won. Then the two opened the 2025 season against each other with Salisbury sending a message with a win.

The latest meeting came in the league semifinals at Catasauqua’s Alumni Field. This time the Tigers got revenge for the early season setback.

It was one of those games where it appeared Northwestern might run away with the game, but Salisbury mounted a challenge that made the latter portion of the game interesting, if not nail-biting.

Salisbury, coming off a one-loss season, was the top seed while Northwestern entered the tournament as the four seed.

“We knew it was going to be a tough game,” said coach Jane Brennan. “It’s always a tough game against them and the intensity picks up in the postseason, so we knew what we were in for.”

The first quarter stayed scoreless until 8:47 was left to play. That’s when Northwestern’s Hannah Gober took the ball on a corner insertion and was able to sneak it past goalie Caroline Gedney for the game’s first goal. Four minutes later and on yet another corner, Taylor Langley scored to give the Lady Tigers a 2-0 advantage.

The second quarter saw Northwestern come out even more aggressively than it did in the opening quarter and again, it was Langley who gave the Lady Tigers the breathing room they would need every bit of later in the game.

About a minute after Langley scored, Salisbury got on the board for the first time.

The Falcons showed that they could convert on a corner play when Ryley Shoemaker took the ball and moved through a crowd of players to make it a 3-1 game to cap the first-half scoring.

With both teams doing some fine tuning at halftime, Salisbury came out looking to cut into the lead against a tough Northwestern Lehigh defense.

With 7:05 left in the third quarter, Sarah Beckage scored for the Falcons to cut the Tigers’ lead to 3-2.

Before the ball was even retrieved from the cage, Northwestern called a time-out to discuss the situation.

From there, the final eight minutes of the third period and the entire fourth quarter consisted of Salisbury looking for the game-tying goal and the Northwestern defense fending the Falcons off.

The Falcons put pressure on goalie Ryan Smolinsky but were unable to get the game-tying goal that they were looking for to send them back to the league finals for the second straight season.

“Our girls never gave up, and we can hold our heads high because of how we played and how we looked to battle from behind,” said Brennan. “Now, we just have to get back on track for districts and make a run there.”

Northwestern went on to beat Southern Lehigh in the finals for its second straight Colonial League championship.

The Northwestern and Salisbury rivalry is on hold until next season.

The Tigers are in the 1A classification where they will be the top seed and the Falcons go into district playoffs as the top seed in the 2A classification. The rivalry could take on a whole new look next season if both teams were to come away from districts with gold medals around their necks.