Winning a league championship is great.
Defending that championship and making it two in a row is even better.
The Lady Tigers get the opportunity to do that after beating Salisbury 3-2 in the Colonial League semifinals Tuesday night at Catasauqua’s Alumni Field.
It was one of those games where it appeared that Northwestern might run away with the game but Salisbury mounted a challenge that made the latter portion of the game very interesting, if not nail biting.
Northwestern entered the tournament as the four seed while Salisbury, coming off a one-loss season, was the top seed. After Saturday’s win over Wilson though, the Tigers were not only excited about playing Salisbury but expected to come away with a win.
With 8:47 left to go in the opening quarter, Hannah Gober took the ball on a corner insertion from Faith Slifer and put it past goalie Caroline Gedney for the game’s first goal. Four minutes later and on yet another corner, Taylor Langley scored for the 17th time this season 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 round and again, it was Langley besting Gedney with a shot to give the Lady Tigers a little breathing room, which they would need every bit of later in the game.
“We really worked hard in practice for this game because we really want to win gold again,” said Langley. “It feels great to be able to contribute in games like this.”
Salisbury got on the board a little over a minute after Langley notched her second goal of the night when Ryley Shoemaker took the ball off a corner and moved through a crowd of players to score and make it a 3-1 game.
Both teams made halftime adjustments as Salisbury looked to find the goals and the Northwestern defense continued to play well.
With 7:05 left in the third quarter, the game became more interesting when Sarah Beckage scored for the Falcons and the two teams were separated by just one goal at 3-2.
“We started to make some poor decisions in the second half, but we started to find it again late in the half and executed a lot better,” said Langley. “We played really well early in the game and then as it went on we started to get away from what we needed to do to win.”
Before the ball was even retrieved from the cage, Tiger head coach Lissa Opolsky called a time-out to discuss the situation with her players.
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 thwarting the Falcons every move by intercepting a pass or taking the ball off the stick of a Salisbury player.
While there were some close calls, the Northwestern defense and goalie Ryan Smolinsky were up to the challenge and Northwestern was able to advance to the league finals.
“Salisbury fought us a little harder late in the game,” said Gober. “I think they knew they were down and had nothing to lose at that point, so they took some chances. We also got a little tight, so just keeping our composure down the stretch was important for us.”
Tuesday’s game was a rematch not only of the season opener, but of last year’s Colonial League championship, which Northwestern won 3-0.
Northwestern now plays Southern Lehigh in the league final.
The Spartans won 1-0 in double overtime against Bangor in the other semifinal game Tuesday. Northwestern lost to Southern Lehigh 2-1 in overtime during the regular season. The game will be played Thursday at 5 p.m. at Bethlehem Area School District Stadium at Liberty High School.
“Southern Lehigh is always a fun team to play,” said Gober. “It’s usually us and them back and forth at the top and now Salisbury has risen to the top as well. I’m excited that our path took us through Salisbury and now Southern Lehigh. I have a couple of girls that I play club hockey with on Southern Lehigh and I’m looking forward to playing them.”