The Northwestern girls soccer team’s state playoff run ended Tuesday with a loss to Archbishop Wood in the semifinals.

The 2024 state champs won two state playoff games this season before their season suffering their first loss of the 2025 season Tuesday.

Players from Archbishop Wood and Northwestern didn’t seem to mind temperatures in the 30s with wind chills falling into the 20s. The two teams played 110 minutes of soccer and went into penalty kicks to decide Tuesday night’s PIAA semifinal game at Upper Perkiomen High School.

Senior Kylie Wiest picked up the deciding goal to open the fifth round when she grounded a ball to the right side of the net to give the Vikings a 3-1 win in penalty kicks.

The game was tied 1-1 at halftime and then 2-2 at the end of regulation. Neither team could find the back of the net in two overtime periods leaving the outcome up to PKs.

Northwestern has made a living out of scoring early to take a quick lead. Archbishop Wood came out determined to at least slow down Sophia Schaffer, the Tiger’s leading scorer and architect of many of those early goals.

With Schaffer having to constantly battle double and triple teams, the Wood offense was able to strike first when its leading scorer, Paige Eckert, put a shot to the very top of the goal from 20 yards out for a 1-0 lead with 22:33 left in the first half.

“We’ve been behind before, so we weren’t really concerned at that point,” said Northwestern head coach Jordan Smith. “We were still confident that we would be able to come back. We were down by two goals before and came back to win, so we just kept playing our type of game and the players kept battling.”

The Tigers were awarded a free kick from 25 yards out and Schaffer took the kick. Rather than looking for a set play against the difficult defense, Schaffer tucked a shot just under the crossbar to tie the game with 4:08 left in the first half.

Northwestern goalie Olivia Reinhart saved the day when Wiest put a shot on goal that Reinhard punched over the crossbar to keep the score tied with just :40 left in the half.

Archbishop Wood’s second goal after a steal when freshman Avery Miller caught up with the ball and played it inside to Eckert, who raced ahead of a defender and fired back to the far side to make it 2-1 with 21:28 left to play.

“We just weren’t able to get our shots where we wanted them,” said Smith. “We had opportunities, but it just didn’t turn into anything and they were able to get the momentum and played the ball through and got the goal at the other end.”

Northwestern got the equalizer when Sofia Sikora delivered a long ball down the right side for Schaffer, who had one defender to beat.

The ball hopped over both Schaffer and the defender, leaving the junior forward to beat the defender to the ball and tie the game with a shot to the far side of the net with just 6:18 left in regulation.

The first overtime consisted of Northwestern controlling play and finding openings for shots, but leaving shots stopped by Gabel or going wide of the posts or over the crossbar. The second overtime had Northwestern fans holding their breath as Archbishop Wood controlled play but also came up empty.

That left the two teams to decide the game by penalty kicks.

Eckert scored on her first-round penalty kick for the Vikings to take a 1-0 lead in the best-of-five rounds.

Reinhart came up with a key block in round two and teammate Dylan Ritter put her shot into the upper left corner of the goal draw even.

Both goalies won the third round.

In round four, Brinley Miller sneaked a shot into the upper left corner for Wood before Gabel made a diving save on a shot by Amelia Glassberg to give Wood a 2-1 advantage.

Wiest was the final shooter for Wood, and she kept the ball on the ground to Reinhart’s left for the winning shot.

“We played really well,” said Smith. “I couldn’t be prouder of the effort from our girls, but the other team just got us tonight. We have a great group of girls and now for some of them, they move on to their next step in college. We have a lot of girls coming back and others who are coming up, so we will look forward to next season.”

Northwestern’s roster had just five seniors on the roster this season. Marly DeLillo, Kiersten Klein, Olivia Reinhart, Sofia Sikora and MK Yanders move on after graduation, but a large part of the core group of players will return for the 2026 season.

PIAA Quartefinals

Northwestern 4, Central Columbia 0

Two years ago Central Columbia beat Northwestern in the PIAA semifinals.

Last season, the Tigers eliminated Central Columbia in the state quarterfinals.

In two regular season meetings since that first loss, Northwestern has defeated the Blue Jays in both games and now they eliminated them from states again when they met in Saturday’s quarterfinal game at North Schuylkill High School with a 4-0 win.

Just 3:11 into the game, Northwestern’s Juliet scored off a corner kick for a 1-0 lead on a pass from Sophia Schaffer.

The Tigers scored again on their second corner of the game when Schaffer again found Snyder for a 2-0 with 25:50 still left in the first half.

“We always try to finish corners and a lot of the time I’m there, I’m one of the targets,” said Snyder. “When we score early like that, the momentum starts to drop for the other team and we have the intensity to keep adding on and it gives us an advantage. More than anything, we want to score early.”

With senior defender Marly DeLillo out with an injury, Tiger head coach Jordan Smith turned to Maddy Milks to fill in and the sophomore has gotten the job done. She had done the same earlier in the season when another teammate was injured.

“When Marly went down,” said Tiger head coach Jordan Smith, “it was a pretty smooth transition to slide Sophia (Sikora) into the center and have Milks outside. She has lots of speed and is really smart.”

“The early playing time helped a lot, especially in skill development and developing chemistry with my teammates,” said Milks. “I was somewhat prepared for it and with the training that coach Smith gives us, I was ready to step in and do whatever we needed.”

Central Columbia had a few shots on goal against Tiger keeper Olivia Reinhart. The senior goalie tipped a shot over the crossbar, made diving stops, came out of the goal to stop shots and just generally turned away anything the Jays were able to put her direction.

The Tigers’ next goal came when Snyder played a pass to Schaffer, who shot past goalie Braelyn Moran for a 3-0 lead

With 3:21 left to play, Bella Smith poked passed to Schaffer, who again beat Moran and give Northwestern a 4-0 lead.

The latest win over Central extends the Tigers state record winning streak to 54 games.

PIAA First Round

Northwestern 6, Troy 1

Some teams have set plays that they run. Sometimes opponents know what’s coming, but still can’t stop it.

Over and over, the Northwestern Lehigh girls soccer team sends Sophia Schaffer down the right side, someone hits her with a pass and she unleashes a shot that goes right past the goalie.

Everybody knows it’s coming and it still works.

The Lady Trojans from Troy High School saw that play coming when they matched up against Northwestern in the first round of the PIAA playoffs on Tuesday, Nov. 4, but they were seemingly powerless to stop it.

Northwestern didn’t waste any time in running the play against Troy. They ran it on the first opportunity that they had when Kherington Yezik played a through ball to Schaffer, who beat goalie Izzy Renzi for the 1-0 lead.

The Tigers switched the plan six minutes later when Kiersten Klein turned in a highlight-worthy goal to make it 2-0.

Schaffer fired a shot that was blocked by Renzi, but bounced back into play and right to Juliet Snyder. Snyder put a shot on goal that went off the far post and bounced to Klein, who played it past Renzi.

“A lot of goals at this point in the season are kind of like trick plays,” said Klein. “Juliet hit a really good ball, and it came back at an angle where if anybody put a toe on it or put any body part on it, it would have gone in.

“I just got my foot behind it and put it in. I think it helped our energy early to get that early goal from Sophia 30 seconds in. That really helped with our momentum.”

Getting Schaffer down the field worked again for the third goal, this time with Snyder playing the ball through and hitting the junior forward in stride. Schaffer played the shot into the back of the goal. Before halftime, Schaffer picked up her third goal of the game and the 108th of her career.

“We had a good game plan coming in,” said Schaffer. “We knew their defense was going to play pretty high, so we were just looking for those gaps and just wanted to get an early lead so we could have a lot of energy going into the first few minutes of the game.

“It sets the tone of the game if you can come out and set the tone in the first few minutes, I think it kind of scares teams into thinking about how the game is going to go, and that’s what we did tonight.”

The Trojans came up with a goal midway through the first half. Giana Renzi put a shot into the top corner on the far side of the goal to prevent the shutout.

Nine minutes into the second half, Schaffer dished a crossing pass to Amelia Glassberg, who put it past Renzi for a goal.

With just under 13 minutes left to play, scored the final goal of the game for a 6-1 lead.

If the Northwestern defense was good in the first half, it was phenomenal in the final 40 minutes of the game. Troy was barely able to break past the midway point of the field until the game clock was down to about 9:15 to play in regulation. Troy was awarded a penalty corner, its first of the second half, and put a ball in front of the goal, but were unable to get a shot to find their second goal.

Northwestern had nine corners to three for Troy. The Tigers also put 13 shots on goal. The Lady Trojans had just three shots on goal in the game.

“We built up from the back with a lot of good combination play,” said Tiger head coach Jordan Smith. “It seemed like every early chance that we got we put in the net. When a team has a long bus ride to get here and then you put the ball in the net early, it’s pretty tough for them to pick their heads up after that.

“I saw them play over the weekend live and watched some film. They’re not a bad team. They’ve got a lot of good players, but we played a strong game tonight.”