EMMAUS — For senior student-athletes playing fall sports, they know that their time on the playing field is limited.

Thanks to a pair of senior players, Northwestern Lehigh now knows exactly how many games it has left in its high school career — one.

The Tigers defeated Allentown Central Catholic 2-1 Tuesday night at Emmaus’ Alumni Field in the PIAA Class 2A semifinals to earn a spot in the finals for a shot at a state championship.

Seniors Brook Balliet and Paige Bissell led the offense, while classmates Syenna Flores and Olivia Spatz both turned in big performances defensively for Northwestern.

Balliet is no stranger to coming up with big goals in the postseason.

In each of her first three seasons, Balliet scored a goal in the district championship, with two of those coming in 1-0 Northwestern victories, and the other coming in a 3-2 championship win. Two of those goals also gave the Tigers wins over Central Catholic.

For her senior season, Balliet opened the scoring for her team just 3:27 into the game when she took a ball that was played through from the backfield by Sophia Sikora, kicked it backwards over her head, and then spun around to chase it toward the goal and fired from about 10 yards out for a 1-0 lead.

Balliet performed the heroics with a defender close on either side of her, and placed the shot to the upper part of the net and out of reach of goalie Lindsey Yen.

“Sophia always does a good job of getting balls into the attack zone, and she gave me a perfect ball that I was able to play and make something out of,” said Balliet. “It all started with her feed.”

Just :14 later, though, it would be the Vikettes who were celebrating.

Meredith Eisenmann came down the right side and rather than firing at the near corner, pushed a shot to the far corner and out of the reach of goalie Olivia Reinhart to tie the game at one.

Both teams can play defense as well as any team, and they showed that through the rest of the first half and into the second.

Each goalkeeper also came up with saves to keep the game at 1-1 through the first 11 minutes of the second half.

At that point, Bissell maneuvered to work through the Central Catholic defense and was guarded by senior Emma Wells, whose knee appeared to buckle as she turned to make a play on Bissell. The Northwestern senior continued on toward the goal and fired from 18 yards out, beating Yen with a ball toward the left side of the goal for a 2-1 Northwestern lead.

“I was initially looking for Sophia (Schaffer) on a through run, but it was deflected off of a Central defender and I knew I had the shot, so I took it on my left foot, which is my weak foot, but I had confidence in it, and it went low and to the back post,” said Bissell.

The Northwestern defense continued to do its work the rest of the way as Central Catholic (19-3-2) looked for a way to tie the game but were turned away.

The Tigers (27-0) had allowed just 10 goals all season coming into the contest, and more than one goal only twice this season.

“We take a lot of pride in our defense. You don’t win games by giving up a lot of goals, and we all work well together and have put in the work we need to do that makes us as good as we are,” said Spatz.

“We played really well tonight, and we’re all proud of how we have played to help the team get to where we are.”

The trip to the finals will be the first for the program, which has now played in four semifinal games in its history.

The Tigers will play Cathedral Prep (20-2-1) — the District 10 champions who defeated District 7 champions Quaker Valley 1-0 in the other semifinal, on Tuesday night. The 2A finals for boys and girls will both have the same schools — Northwestern Lehigh and Cathedral Prep — playing each other for the state championship.

“We call New Tripoli ‘Titletown,’ so to make it to the finals for the first time kind of makes that fit even more,” said Bissell. “Then, to have both the boys team and the girls teams going to the finals makes it even more so.”

START TIME ... Just like the semifinals, the girls championship game will follow the boys contest. The boys will start at 4 p.m., with the girls scheduled to begin at 7 p.m.