CATASAUQUA — A lot can change over the span of a high school sports season.

Northwestern Lehigh and Salisbury met in the season opener in field hockey back on Aug. 26 and the Tigers were shut out 2-0.

Fast forward to Tuesday night’s game at Catasauqua’s Alumni Field for the Colonial League semifinal game, and it’s a different story.

Northwestern scored two first-quarter goals, and finished with a 3-2 win over the Falcons to advance in the league playoffs.

The win was an upset, with Northwestern as the four seed and Salisbury the top seed. After Saturday’s win over Wilson though, the Tigers were not only excited about playing Salisbury, but actually expected to come away with a win.

With 8:47 left to go in the opening quarter, Hannah Gober took the ball on a corner insertion from Faith Slifer and put it past goalie Caroline Gedney for the game’s first goal. On yet another corner, Taylor Langley scored for the 17th time this season and a 2-0 advantage.

The second quarter saw Northwestern come out even more aggressively than it did in the opening round and again, it was Langley who beat Gedney with a shot to give the Tigers some breathing room, which they would need every bit of later on.

“We really worked hard in practice for this game because we really want to win gold again,” said Langley. “It feels great to be able to contribute in games like this.”

Salisbury got on the board a little over a minute after Langley notched her second goal of the night when Ryley Shoemaker took the ball off of a corner and moved through a crowd of players to score and make it 3-1.

Both teams made halftime adjustments, as Salisbury looked to find the goals it would need and the Northwestern defense continued to play well.

With 7:05 left in the third quarter, things suddenly became more interesting when Sarah Beckage scored for the Falcons and the two teams were separated by just one goal at 3-2.

“We started to make some poor decisions in the second half, but we started to find it again late in the half and executed a lot better,” said Langley. “We played really well early in the game, and then as it went on we started to get away from what we needed to do to win.”

Before the ball was even retrieved from the cage, coach Lissa Opolsky called a timeout to discuss the situation with her players.

The final eight minutes of the third period, and the entire fourth quarter, consisted of Salisbury looking for the game-tying goal, and the Northwestern defense thwarting them at every move by intercepting a pass or taking the ball off the stick of a Salisbury player.

While there were some close calls, the defense and goalie Ryan Smolinsky were up to the challenge to enable Northwestern to advance to the league finals.

“Salisbury fought us a little harder late in the game. I think they knew they were down and had nothing to lose at that point, so they took some chances,” said Gober. “We also got a little tight, so just keeping our composure down the stretch was important for us.”

OFF TO THE CHRISTMAS CITY … The game was a rematch not only of the season opener, but of last year’s Colonial League championship which Northwestern won 2-0. Northwestern now plays Southern Lehigh in this year’s final. The Spartans won 1-0 in double overtime against Bangor in the other semifinal game Tuesday night. Northwestern lost to Southern 2-1 in overtime during the regular season. The game will be played Thursday night at 5 p.m. at Bethlehem Area School District Stadium at Liberty High School.

Northwestern 3, Salisbury 2

Northwestern 2 1 0 0 - 3

Salisbury 0 1 1 0 - 2

Goals: Northwestern - Taylor Langley 2, Hannah Gober 1; Salisbury - Ryley Shoemaker 1, Sarah Beckage 1; Assists: Northwestern - Faith Slifer 1.

Records: Northwestern (15-5); Salisbury (17-2).