When Salisbury’s season opening field hockey game against Northwestern Lehigh was postponed by thunderstorms and rescheduled for Sept. 29, it created a four-day stretch in the Falcons’ late-season schedule in which they would play games against three of the top teams in the Colonial League.

The schedule had games at Southern Lehigh and Northwestern Lehigh on back-to-back nights then a day off before a game at Bangor.

Salisbury sailed through the rough schedule with a 3-0 record to flex its muscles in the league standings.

Ava Morgans scored all three goals in a 3-0 win at Southern Lehigh to get past the Spartans.

The next night saw a trip to take on Northwestern. After a slow start the Falcons got a 2-1 win against the Tigers. The three-game trip ended with a 2-1 win against the Slaters.

Northwestern struck within the first two minutes to take a quick lead over Salisbury, but it was the only goal the Tigers scored.

A Salisbury penalty in the attack zone gave Northwestern an early corner that the Tigers capitalized.

Salisbury made some quick adjustments and started to take over the game from that point.

“We have a great team of girls, and we all get along and play well together,” said Falcon freshman Charlotte Harpster. “We don’t get down on ourselves or each other and we just kept competing and played our game.”

It was Harpster who offered the response when she played a ball that rebounded off Tiger goalie Charlotte Gober. Harpster put the return shot through Gober’s legs to tie the game with just 1:15 left in the first quarter.

Both defenses stiffened, but Salisbury dominated the play.

On the offensive end, the Falcons had some opportunities that they were unable to capitalize on. They also had eight corners and had trouble converting them until the third quarter reached its final stages.

On her team’s fifth corner of the night, senior Ellie Schneider worked herself into a position 10 yards out from the goal with one of her own players positioned directly in front of the cage. With her teammate and a couple of defenders in front of the goal, Schneider used the screen and put a shot just inside the post for the tiebreaker with 5:03 left in the quarter.

“We know that mistakes happen,” said Schneider. “So we just regrouped after that first goal and really started to settle in both offensively and defensively. We had a lot of corners, but not a lot that went in. We had to make an adjustment on what we were doing, so we took the risk of going to slip shot and it connected.”

Salisbury’s speed and aggressiveness gave Northwestern trouble all night and Salisbury kept the Tigers from gaining any momentum. Knowing that speed could be a factor in the game, Falcon head coach Jane Brennan inserted a pair of track athletes into the backfield and it worked perfectly.

“We put Izzy Quiros and Shayla Tyrrell into the lineup back there knowing that they had the speed that we needed to make sure that they were able to channel and do their job, and they did it,” said Brennan. “No matter who is out there, this team works well together, and they trust each other and communicate so well, it’s remarkable.”

Two days later, the defense was again on display as the Falcons downed Bangor 2-1 to make it through the stretch of games unscathed.

The three wins put their overall season record at 11-1-1 and their league record at 11-0-1 for the season.

The wins over Southern Lehigh and Bangor were especially important because those two teams are chasing the Falcons in both the league and District 11 2A standings. Northwestern is in the 1A classification for districts but is still hanging around and hoping for the top seed in the league playoffs, so the loss to Salisbury hurt its league chances of getting the top spot.

The Falcons have just a pair of games on their schedule for this week with both Saucon Valley and Palisades coming to visit. Salisbury defeated both of those teams in back-to-back games a couple of weeks ago.