EMMAUS - Northwestern Lehigh had a week off before it had to open the District 11 Class 2A tournament with a semifinal game against Southern Lehigh - the same team it closed out the regular season against.

During that week, coach Marcus Janda put the team through what he called “probably the hardest week of practice that we have had since the start of the season.”

The reason for the extra work was because Janda felt his team let down against the Spartans in a 5-3 loss, and he wasn’t going to let them forget how important it was to beat them this time around.

The result was a 9-1 win for the Tigers on Tuesday night at Emmaus High School. The victory not only sends them into their third straight district championship, but also gives them the opportunity to defend last year’s title.

Even without junior defenseman Jared Meck - who is recovering from an appendectomy - the Northwestern defense carried the day. Goalie Bailen Smargiassi made 13 saves, pushing him over the 600-save mark for his career. The accomplishment is even more impressive considering that Smargiassi was not the starting goalie until his junior season.

“I’m really happy with our defensive performance. I made a couple of good saves but really, it was the defense in front of me. They never gave them an easy shot, and the one time they did score it was a little miscommunication, but we corrected that,” said Smargiassi. “They told me at practice yesterday that I was three saves off of 600, but I wasn’t really thinking about that much during the game. I was just thinking about keeping the ball out of the net and not about 600.”

Southern Lehigh really didn’t find many true openings to get shots through. Sophomore Austin Bittenbender was tough on Southern Lehigh players looking to move the ball down the field.

“It was really important to us to get this win because we just recently lost to them, so it was important for us to play really good defense,” said defenseman Carter Zentz. “I’m hoping for another district championship, and another win.”

By the time the opening quarter reached the midway point, senior Stone Sosnovik had notched two goals, with freshman Tyler Kaas assisting on the first one and the second coming after a Southern Lehigh penalty that left them a man down.

In the second quarter, Michael Lagowy, another freshman, made it 3-0 when he fired a shot past goalie Eli Dancho.

The miscommunication that Smargiassi mentioned allowed Southern Lehigh to get its only goal with 1:09 left in the first half.

As the Spartans (10-9) became more frustrated, they committed more penalties that left them down a man and the Tigers (12-7) took advantage of two of those opportunities. Just 2:16 into the third quarter, Kaas moved toward the goal and faked a pass to beat Dancho and make it 4-1. After Sosnovik picked up his hat trick later in the quarter, Kaas took a feed from Sosnovik for his second goal of the game and 25th of the season.

Leading 6-1 going into the final quarter, Northwestern got goals from Sosnovik, Devon Hildebrand and Blaine Snyder to finish off the rout.

“We had tons of opportunities and I thought we could have put a couple more in the back of the net, but they played within the system, and they played selflessly and ultimately we capitalized enough times,” said Janda.

SCORING RECAP ... Sosnovik had four goals for the Tigers, Kaas added two, and Lagowy, Hildebrand, and Snyder all collected one.

ANOTHER ONE ... Snyder’s goal was the 140th of his career. He is Northwestern’s all-time leader in that department.

UP NEXT ... Central Catholic (11-7) won the other semifinal game Tuesday - beating Moravian Academy 20-12 - to set up the third straight meeting between the Vikings and Tigers in the 2A championship game. The title game will be Thursday at 5 p.m. at Lehigh University.

REMATCH ... Central Catholic beat Northwestern 20-6 earlier this season.

LACROSSE HISTORY 101 … Prior to the 2019 spring sports season, District 11 had just a 3A classification for lacrosse. Since the 2A classification took shape in 2019, Central Catholic is the only school to win more than one championship after they collected back-to-back titles in 2021 and 2022. The Tigers can tie the Vikings with two titles if they win on Thursday.