Northwestern made its first appearance in the PIAA Class AA team championship tournament since 2008.

The Tigers dual-meet season came to end in the preliminary round as they fell to Southern Columbia, 40-26 Monday night at Whitehall High School."They're a tough team," said Northwestern head coach Jim Moll. "They have a lot of studs. We knew we were going to have our hands full."There were a handful of toss up matches that we were going to have to win and they got a couple of them. That made it tough for us to make up any ground on them."The Tigers grabbed a 10-0 lead on a major decision by Quentin Bernhard at 126 and Jarett White's pin at 132 and was still ahead 14-4 after Ryan Dengler moved up a weight class and pulled out a major decision at 145.But Southern Columbia came storming back with three straight wins, including Blake Marks' first-period pin at 160, and took a 116-14 lead after the 170-pound match.Andrew Sorensen put Northwestern back in front with a decision win at 182, but Southern Columbia, the District 4 third-place team, won two straight bouts by fall to jump in front for good, 28-17.Jacob Murray (285) made it 28-20 with a decision win before SC put the match away with pins at 106 and 113.Northwestern's Baily Wehr got a forfeit win at 120 to finish off the match.Northwestern (15-4) wrestled without a pair of returning state qualifiers in Matt Peters and Caleb Clymer. Both were missing for most of the early part of the season but returned in late January. Peters missed team districts and Clymer wrestled in two of four bouts last weekend.With their full line up, it might have been a different match."If you have two state qualifiers out of your line up it makes it really tough," said Moll. "That's not an excuse. We made it this far without both them in the line up pretty much all year. I thought our team was good enough that we had a shot to win. They just did a better job tonight."Northwestern has made great strides over the past few seasons. The Tigers made last year's District 11 team tournament for the first time since winning the 2008 district title. Now this season they qualified for states for the first time since that same year."We were close last year," said Moll. "We felt we could have been here last year. To take one step forward this year was good. Hopefully we can take another step next year."BONUS PRIZE ... Southern Columbia picked up 16 bonus points with five pins and one major decision. Northwestern won six matches, but only earned eight bonus points with a pair of pins and a pair of major decisions.DOWN THE ROAD ... Southern Columbia will move on to the state team tournament in Hershey. The Tigers, which share the same team nickname as Northwestern Lehigh, face District 10 champion Reynolds in Thursday's first round.S. Columbia 40, Northwestern 26126 - Quentin Bernhard (NW) major dec. Jake Renn, 10-0132 - Jarett White (NW) pinned Michael Miner in 1:09138 - Anthony DiCataldo (NW) major dec. Todd Lane, 10-4145 - Ryan Dengler (NW) major dec. Jake Santor, 12-2152 - John Gembic (SC) dec. Jackson Bernhard, 4-1160 - Blake Marks (SC) pinned David VanBlargan in 1:25170 - Anthony Scicchitano (SC) dec. Eddie Parrish, 3-1182 - Andrew Sorensen (NW) dec. Carter Houseknecht, 4-1195 - Kevin Olvaney (SC) pinned Jacob Shellhamer in 1:23220 - Steve Toczylousky (SC) pinned Quin Moyer in 1:34285 - Jacob Murray (NW) dec. Andrew Bell, 5-2106 - Jaret Lane (SC) pinned Zach Anderson in :32113 - Shane Casey (SC) pinned Ryan Haas in 4:51120 - Baily Wehr (NW won by forfeit.