The PIAA semifinal girls soccer game between Northwestern Lehigh and Archbishop Wood went to penalty kicks after 110 minutes didn’t determine a winner.

Archbishop Wood senior Kylie Wiest nailed the deciding goal to open the fifth round of penalty kicks to give the Vikings a 3-1 win in penalty kicks.

The game was tied 1-1 at halftime and 2-2 at the end of regulation.

Northwestern usually scores early to take a quick lead. Archbishop Wood came out determined to at least slow down Sophia Schaffer, the Tigers’ leading scorer.

With Schaffer battling double and triple teams, the Wood offense struck first when Paige Eckert scored 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 Tiger 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 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 was able to leap high in the air and punch over the crossbar to keep the score tied with just :40 left in the half.

Wood’s second goal came from freshman Avery Miller, who caught up with the ball and played it inside to Eckert.

Eckart raced ahead of a defender and fired back to the far side catching Reinhart moving toward the nearside post. for a 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.”

The tying goal came 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 their 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.

In the shootout, Eckert was able to score 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 Dylan Ritter put her shot into the upper left corner of the goal draw even. Both goalies won the third round and in round four Brinley Miller sneaked a shot into the upper left corner and Gabel made a diving save on a shot by Amelia Glassberg gave Wood a 2-1 advantage going into the final round. Wiest was the final shooter for Archbishop Wood, and she kept the ball on the ground to Reinhart’s left for the winning shot.

Northwestern’s roster had just five seniors on the roster this season. Marly DeLillo, Kiersten Klein, Olivia Reinhart, Sofia Sikora, and M.K. Yanders move on after graduation, but a large part of the core group of players will return for the 2026 season. The Tigers finished the season with a 26-1-0 overall record. Archbishop Wood went on to beat Burrell High School 2-1 in overtime to win the PIAA 2A championship.

“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.”