Northwestern completed its most successful football season in a long time with last week's Eastern Conference title win over North Schuylkill.

The Tigers made their first postseason appearance since 2009, when they lost the Eastern Conference title game to Bethlehem Catholic in head coach Bob Mitchell's final season. The Tigers had not won a football title since the 2002 District 11 Class AA crown.

This year's team improved every week as several young players made their marks on the program.

Sophomore running back Harry Hall had a break out season and record-setting junior quarterback Frank Dangello took a few steps forward in his second year as a started.

While the younger players stood out, there was a committed group of seniors that played a large role in this year's success.

"We knew we could be good," said Dangello. "We should have been in districts, but we weren't and right now, [the Eastern [JUMP]Conference title] is justice because the seniors went out the right way."

The senior leadership was key for the Tigers this season and coach Josh Snyder believes that the seniors on his team were a special group of players.

"I've been around football for a long time as a player and a coach and you just don't get a group of seniors like this very often," explained Snyder. "They just willed this team to never give up throughout the year. Even last year, these guys stepped up as juniors and really took charge and it was a tough year because we got beat seven times, but these guys never gave up."

Members of the team and coaching staff pointed to Northwestern's comeback win over Notre Dame as a point in the season when things really started to click for the team.

Jake Najarian was a big part of both the offensive and defensive lines and led the team with six sacks. He agreed that the win over Notre Dame was a big win for the Tigers.

"The win over Notre Dame where we toughed it out in the fourth quarter," said Najarian. "We really knew we had special things coming for our team, we were able to turn things around and it resulted in a championship."

Tiger seniors include Kevin Markovitch, Alex Bobbyn Justin Betz, Alec Fixl, Jacob Najarian, Joshua Masters, Mackenzie Storm and Christian Snyder.