After taking just a little time to acclimate themselves, the Northwestern Tigers went on a scoring binge as they shut down Salisbury 7-1 in their season opener on Tuesday.

Sam Seyfried scored four times, including three in the first half.

Seyfried’s first goal came 17 minutes into the game and from there, the goals came in a pretty rapid succession. About five minutes after Seyfried put Northwestern up 1-0, Caleb Danner tallied his first goal of the year. Seyfried then took over, scoring the next two goals, the second on a beautiful assist from Jeff Garcia – his first of two in the game - putting the Tigers up 4-0 at the half.

The frenzy wasn’t completely unexpected by Seyfried. “I’m not saying that we’re going to score seven goals every game, but I’m not saying that we’re not going to either,” he said. “We have a good offense, and we’re going to be capable of putting a lot of points on the board.”

Meanwhile, goalie Austin Vogwill was generally unchallenged by the Salisbury offense. Zach Rosamalia came on in relief later in the game, and Salisbury did get some stronger shots on goal, and even snuck a shot past him for their lone score of the game.

In the second half, Seyfried tallied his final goal just two minutes into the half. Zach Creighton played a beautiful header with 33:31 left to play that made it 6-0. The Northwestern scoring wrapped up when Seth Brady scored with 28 minutes left in the contest. Salisbury’s Prince Radande scored with 15:35 left for the lone Falcons score.

In addition to his goal, Creighton added two assists. Luke Bryan and Ryan Baker also added assists for Northwestern.

Coming off their second straight trip to the PIAA finals in Hershey, the Tigers will get an early test of stamina this week as their schedule has them playing five games in five days, starting with Tuesday’s win over Salisbury. Northwestern has a non-conference game at Pennridge today and then hosts Palmerton on Thursday. Friday the team is at Wilson, before it travels to Hamburg on Saturday to play Solanco in another non-conference game.

“This week is going to tell us a lot of things,” said head coach Nate Hunsicker. “It’s going to be a tough stretch, especially with the weather being as hot as it is. It was good to be able to use the whole roster today to give some guys a bit of a breather because it’s going to be a tough week.”

As for Seyfried, he’s also aware of just how tough the schedule is to start the season, but the senior midfielder knows enough about the team to believe that they’ll be able to stand up to the challenge.

“I think we’re going to be very good again this season,” Seyfried said. “We’ve got a lot of guys back, and the younger guys are really working hard to fill any holes, so I’m excited. The weather will make this week a little tougher, but we’ll be OK.”

HO-HUM ... Vogwill is in his first season as the NW goalie, and was called upon to make just three saves in the game. Most of the action was at the other end of the field throughout the game. Rosamalia was a little more tested as most of Salisbury’s top players stayed on the field against the Tigers younger players.

ON THE JOB TRAINING ... With seven sophomores and two freshmen on the roster, Hunsicker was glad to have the opportunity to get some of the younger players on the field. One of them, Brady, tallied a goal for Northwestern.