The goal for any high school sports team is to improve over the course of a season.

While the Southern Lehigh girls soccer team showed great improvement this year, it wasn't quite enough to overtake Northwestern in Tuesday's Colonial League semifinals at Salisbury High School

The Lady Tigers, who beat the Spartans 5-1 earlier this season, needed a goal with 2:10 left in the game to pull off a 1-0 victory over Southern Lehigh on Tuesday.

Angela Motolese took the ball on a Tiger transition and saw a streaking Sarah Segan out wide. Motolese fed her beautifully to set up a one-on-one with Spartan goalkeeper Aly Moyer. The Tigers' leading scorer hesitated slightly before beating Moyer to the left for the game-winner.

"What was awesome there with that goal," Northwestern head coach Kelly Bleam said. "It was a goal in transition, and we are very strong in transition. Southern Lehigh is a very strong team, defensively, in set defense. Once I saw the transition occurring, I knew it would be hard to stop the combination of Angela Motolese and Sarah Segan."

Earlier on in the contest, the Tigers had plenty of opportunities to score, reeling off shot after shot. However, Solehi's defensive unit stood tall on each occasion, limiting those chances and thwarting the Lady Tigers (11-1 Colonial League) of any early scoring.

"As a coach, I ask myself why some of those shots don't start going in," Bleam said. "But we just needed to keep trying and creating opportunities, with the hope that they would start to go in."

In the second half of play, the two sides were going back and forth, taking the ball strongly at each others' cages, only to see those advances stopped.

The resilience and persistence of the Tigers eventually paid off.

"Normally, I just try and split the defense because I know that runners will be there," Motolese said. "I knew Segan was wide, so once I split, I knew she would be able to get to it. It's hard to explain, but I just knew she would be there."

With the win, the Tigers will take on Saucon Valley – the only team to defeat the Tigers during the regular season. With revenge an obvious factor, Segan sees league final as another opportunity.

"We know that Saucon has really quick pressure, so we know we will have to play the ball quickly and we cannot hold onto it long," Segan said. "We'll also have to stop them defensively, because they're very quick up front, too. So we'll have to work hard."

Despite the one-sidedness of the final amounts of shots on goal (Northwestern 16, Southern Lehigh 6), the Lady Tigers battled evenly with the Spartans (10-2 Colonial League) and received some late-game fortune in order to reach the league final.