NAZARETH - Pleasant Valley and Nazareth both entered Tuesday’s Eastern Pennsylvania Conference girls lacrosse game undefeated.

When the Blue Eagles jumped out to a 4-1 lead after the first quarter, PV’s perfect start to the season was in serious jeopardy.

But the Bears dominated the rest of the game and pulled away for a 15-5 victory.

Pleasant Valley head coach Toni Bush said she had a talk with her team after a rocky start.

“I told them that they need to be able to handle pressure,” Bush said. “They were getting pressured and we got a yellow card. They scored three quick ones on us with the yellow, and I think it just frazzled them.

“They took a little break to cool down, think about things and put everything in perspective and just recognize every team we play is a different caliber team. They’re going to throw different things at us and you have to adjust. We knew what we needed to do and went out and picked up the pace and just started clicking.”

The Bears (9-0) definitely did start clicking, as they exploded for a seven-goal second quarter.

Freshman Samantha Miller got things rolling with a score to cut the Nazareth lead to 4-2.

Junior Devon Bush scored her first of four goals, and sophomore Rylee Rath followed with three straight goals to put PV up 6-4. Rath added two more goals later to give her five for the game.

“We just knew we didn’t look very focused,” Rath said after the slow start. “I knew we’d be OK, I was just trying to stay calm and get rid of that quarter in my head and realize we have three more quarters to get back at it.

“I think it was just a matter of getting it out of our heads and knowing we’re a better team than we showed. We can’t play scared, we had to play like we are capable.”

After Nazareth came out with four goals in a five-minute-and-45- second span of the first quarter, they didn’t score again until late in the game as the Pleasant Valley defense shut things down.

“Our defense was huge for us,” Bush said. “We run different types of defenses based on the offense that’s coming at us. Once we knew what their offense looked like, we made some adjustments and switched up our defense.

“After we dropped into a different style of defense, we shut them down.”

With Bush and Rath adding to their goal totals and Morgan Ryals also contributing a score in the third quarter, Pleasant Valley’s lead was a comfortable 12-4 heading into the final quarter.

“Being undefeated at this point of the season was not something that we necessarily expected - especially for a team like us that’s trying to build up our program,” Nazareth head coach Michelle Mihalko said. “There was not necessarily any pressure on us because we were the underdogs in this situation.

“PV is a tough team, and they have been a tough team for a while now. I’m really happy with the way we came out. We just have to string three more quarters together,”

STILL UNBEATEN ... Coach Bush said that her team was excited about the matchup of unbeaten teams. “Eight games into the season, we had a pretty good feel for where our strengths were,” she said. “But how you get better is to have teams do different things against you. It challenges how you work under that adversity. I think we did a good job adjusting to a different style today, and also handling some adversity early in the game.”

BUILDING THE PROGRAM ... Nazareth’s Mihalko is in her second season with the Eagles. The team has come a long way since she took over the program. “It’s been going great,” Mihalko said. “We’re trying to close the gap on teams that we lost to last year, and I think we have done that early in the season. We are basically trying to break into the top-four in the EPC. Nazareth hasn’t made the playoffs in a couple of years. We’re trying to change that and put Nazareth girls lacrosse back on the map.”