Northwestern Lehigh will have fond memories of how it opened the 2025 PIAA tournament.

First, by virtue of being District 11 champions, it had a home game rather than having to open the tourney on the road.

Second, it beat a pretty good pitcher in sophomore Gretchen Hiley.

Third, junior pitcher Emma Freeman reached several milestones in the 11-0 win over Athens for the Tigers.

Although they didn’t know much about Hiley coming into the game, by the second inning Northwestern looked like it knew everything it needed to know about her.

Hiley retired the side in order in the first before freshman Natalie Conner led off the second with a hard line drive to left field for a double, and senior Shelby Mitman took advantage of having one more home game when she followed with a hard ground ball to right that scored Conner with the go-ahead run.

Meanwhile, the Wildcats never did quite figure out Freeman, who allowed just a walk her first time through the order.

In the third, Freeman struck out Danica May for the 200th strikeout of the season, and then got Gretchen Schmieg for career strikeout number 499. The milestone was officially reached the next inning when Freeman fanned Savannah Finan for No. 500.

A fourth-inning single by McKenna Jarvis would be all that Athens could manage in five innings against Freeman.

“We didn’t know much about their hitters, so I just went after them with a lot of different things to find out what they could and could not hit,” said Freeman of her approach to the game.

The Northwestern bats did some damage to Hiley in the third when they sent 13 hitters to the plate and scored eight runs on seven hits.

Abby Dunstan, Conner, and Ella Bressi all had an RBI single in the inning, Lizzie Diehl added a two-run single, and when Dunstan came up for the second time in the inning, she just missed a grand slam and had to settle for a two-run ground-rule double to left that made it 9-0.

“It feels great to be able to contribute from the bottom of the lineup,” said Bressi of her two-hit, two-RBI game. “It’s really exciting how we are playing right now, and we felt we could come out today and do it even though we didn’t know a lot about their pitcher. But we knew she was really good.”

An inning later, the Tigers capped the scoring with two runs on an RBI single by Bressi and a fielding error. In all, Athens committed three errors that resulted in seven unearned runs.

Rylee McGinley, Dunstan, Conner and Bressi all had two hits in the game.

“Before the game, I literally said to the girls, ‘I don’t know if today is going to be one of those days where we can score 11 runs, like we did in the district championship.’ I wanted them to expect a much closer, maybe 2-1 type of game, but our bats came alive,” said coach Kate Farber of the team’s offense.

“I knew we could hit like that but against this pitcher today, I thought it was going to be much tougher and I’m really proud of our girls.”

Freeman’s mark of 200 strikeouts this season and 500 for her career are especially impressive considering that she still has a season of high school softball to play.

“I’ve been able to pitch every season, so that helps. It also helps that Abby (Dunstan) and I have such a good relationship on what pitches to throw and how to set up hitters,” said Freeman. “We are usually on the same page, and that helps a lot.”

JUST TELL US WHERE AND WHEN … Northwestern is ready for its next challenge, which will come on Thursday in the PIAA quarterfinals. The Tigers will face Interboro High School, just outside of Philadelphia. The Buccaneers are the champions from District 1 and defeated Frankford 19-0 in the opening round of states. The location and time of the game have yet to be announced.

THAT’S MORE LIKE IT … After being hot all season, Northwestern saw its offense cool to just a .209 average in the league playoffs. In districts, the real Tigers’ offense was back and hit .390 on their way to being district champions. Overall in the playoffs, Northwestern is hitting .320 as a team with 44 runs scored in seven games.

Athens 000 00 - 0 1 3

Northwestern 018 2x - 11 11 0

Hiley and Paul; Freeman and Dunstan. W - Freeman. L - Dunstan.

Records: Athens (21-2); Northwestern (25-2)