Saucon Valley and Northwestern Lehigh met Monday at Emmaus High School’s Memorial Field in the semifinals of the District 11 2A girls lacrosse tournament.

While the Panthers have been hanging around the .500 mark all season, their young players came through in Monday’s game to help the team’s leaders hold off the Tigers for a 10-9 win and a trip to the finals against Southern Lehigh.

Four times Northwestern (11-8) worked its way back and tied the game.

Twice, the Tigers were down by two goals and still came back to even the score. Two things they weren’t able to do were to take a lead and to work back from a three-goal deficit late in the game.

Early in the game, freshman Gracie Donahue, who entered district play with 74 goals, was close to unstoppable for Saucon Valley (8-10). She had three first-quarter goals and added another in the second quarter to pick up four of the Panthers first five goals.

After some changes at halftime, Northwestern shut her down in the second half.

Saucon Valley’s Tess Andrews, who picked up a first-quarter goal, came up with two goals in the third quarter to spread the scoring with Lauren Hawk, McKenzie Johnston and Kristen Lussier all adding single goals.

Hawk and Lussier scored their goals late in the game and put the Panthers up 10-7 with 6:05 left in regulation.

“We played much better as the game went on,” said Northwestern head coach Pam Colistra. “In the second quarter especially, we did a tremendous job defensively and limited their opportunities. The offense and the defense really did a nice job for us.”

Just as Donahue was unstoppable for Northwestern, Amanda Breidinger also scored four times in the game with a pair of goals in both the first and fourth quarters of the game.

Breidinger made a nice spin move be beat goalie Leah Guest to tie the game at 2-2 in the first quarter. Her other three goals all worked to bring Northwestern closer in the game, including her fourth goal, which came with 5:01 left to play and made it a 10-8 game.

Freshman Cali Colistra scored three times in the game. Her first opened the second-quarter scoring and tied the game at 4-4. Her second and third goals came just 44 seconds apart in the third.

After Saucon Valley took a 6-4 lead on Andrews’ goal, Colistra scored 14 seconds later when her shot deflected off of Guests’ stick and went to the back of the net. Not long after she put a shot past Guest to tie the game 6-6.

Junior Olivia Fagan had a good game with her first goal tying the game 1-1. Late in the fourth quarter, she delivered a great pass to Breidinger who scored to make it a 10-8 game. Less than two minutes later, she scored her second goal of the night to pull the Tigers within a goal at 10-9.

The game came down to a free position play for Fagan with :06 left in regulation. She somehow fired a shot around a pair of defenders and even though Guest was screened, she got her stick on the ball and deflected it away from the goal as time ran out.

“We had to keep battling throughout the game and the girls never quit, they never hung their heads,” said Colistra. “To get down by three goals and then have the game come down to the final play with us having a chance to tie the game was awesome. Our effort was definitely there.”

Goalie Ashley Yacynych came into the game needing three saves to reach the 300 mark. The junior goalie was called on for seven saves in the game to surpass the milestone.

Earlier in the regular season Yacynych made the 200th save of her career. With 304 career saves, she will likely surpass the 400 mark in her senior season.

Coach Pam Colistra called saying goodbye to a group of five seniors “the toughest part” of the loss.

Ella Filipovits, Olivia Greenawalt, Haley Kerschner, Gracie Scheffler, and Mykaela Yanders are all heading to graduation.

“They have all been so great to work with and it’s going to be different without their personalities and leadership,” said Colistra. “The remaining players just have to step into bigger roles and I’m excited to see the freshman group that we will have next season.”