Make it a double!

Northwestern won its second straight Colonial League championship on Saturday with a 3-0 win over Southern Lehigh. The Spartans had held the league gold medals for four straight seasons prior to the Tigers taking over the crown last year.

From early in the game, Southern Lehigh grabbed control of the game’s tempo and put a lot of pressure on goalie Naomi Glassberg, who was up to the task and stopped or deflected everything that the Spartans threw at her. The closest thing to a goal was when Southern Lehigh was pressuring and a shot clanged off the crossbar and came back onto the field. The Northwestern defense stood strong and cleared the ball, which appeared to give them some momentum.

“I was kind of nervous at first,” said Glassberg, who is just a sophomore. “When we got that first goal, it helped me to settle in a little bit. From there, I just kept my composure the rest of the game and the extra goals certainly helped.”

The first goal came when Sophia Motolese took a pass from Olivia Motolese and beat goalie Ava Foran to put Northwestern up 1-0. Just prior to the goal, Kayla Bardonner headed a ball off a free kick, and the shot found Foran out of position, but it sailed just wide of the net. The near-miss did serve to jump start the Northwestern offense from that point though.

Southern Lehigh shot itself in the foot when what looked like an innocent pass back to Foran went horribly wrong. The pass, which came from Foran’s left, went well to her right and she had to scramble to get to the ball, which wound up just rolling barely through the mouth of the goal for a Tigers score. Statistically, the goal goes to the last Tigers player to have touched the ball, which was Camryn Fitch. The 2-0 lead going into halftime allowed Northwestern to breathe a little easier coming into the final 40 minutes of play.

The show belonged to the goalies in the second half as both Foran and Glassberg made strong saves to keep the game at 2-0. Ashley Meinhold looked to put Southern Lehigh on the board with a shot from 30 yards out, but it had a little too much air under it and Glassberg ran under the shot to make the save.

“She’s only a sophomore and she was tremendous,” said Northwestern head coach Kelly Bleam of Glassberg’s effort. “She’s a reason why we’ve been successful; she just does a fantastic job. She has a great career ahead of her and she’s composed well beyond her years. I can’t say enough.”

It looked like the defenses would carry the entire second half until Sophia Motolese delivered a long kick to the middle of the field about 20 yards in front of the net. A Southern Lehigh player headed the ball, but Zentz jumped in front of a defender and got a shot past Foran to stretch the game to 3-0.

“When we went up 3-0, we just settled down and kept our heads up after that because we knew we were in good shape and we were going to be going into districts as a league champion,” said Zentz.

RETURN ENGAGEMENT … The league title gives Northwestern the No. 2 seed in the 3A girls soccer playoffs and a first-round bye. Southern Lehigh has to play a quarterfinal round game against Bangor. If things progress the way they are likely to, the Tigers and Spartans will play each other in the semis on Saturday. Southern Lehigh is the third seed, Bangor is No. 6 and the top seed in the tournament will be Pottsville. “I’m sure they’ll be psyched for revenge and it’s going to be a heck of a game. It always is with this team,” said Bleam of a possibly rematch in districts.

FINALS FAMILIARITY … A league final with either Southern Lehigh or Northwestern, and sometimes both, has been a tradition. For at least the last 22 seasons, at least one of the two teams has been in the finals and one or the other has the championship in seven of the last eight seasons, with just Salisbury interrupting the streak in 2016.