The first 30 minutes of play against Northwestern must’ve been just what Salisbury field hockey head coach Meredith Makhoul had drawn up. The Lady Falcons were playing lockdown defense, the offense was generating solid looks on goal, and the two sides went into halftime tied 0-0.

But as good as Salisbury looked in the first half of play, the second half was a different story for Makhoul’s team.

Northwestern broke that scoreless game with an early goal in the second half, and that began a scoring spree that turned out to be the deciding factor. The Lady Tigers quickly scored two more goals to secure the 3-0 victory on Saturday afternoon at Northwestern High School.

“We struggled with scoring in the beginning, but overall the first half was everything I expected from the girls,” Makhoul said. “I’m not sure what happened in the second half, except we fell apart. We were a completely different team in the second half. We got tired and struggled.”

Salisbury had a prime opportunity to get on the scoreboard first with a penalty shot in the first quarter that was blocked by Northwestern’s goalie. The Lady Falcons had a number of other opportunities in the first half, but could not put the ball in the back of the cage.

Northwestern, on the other hand, took full advantage of its shots in the second half. Not even six minutes in, Leighanna Lister redirected a Lady Tiger pass out of mid-air past Salisbury goalie Peyton Stauffer for the 1-0 advantage.

“We have been spending more time working with our defense at practice and it showed,” Makhoul said. “We changed our set up and have been working a lot on our skill in the back. Defensively we have struggled in the past. In this game, however, it showed that there is talent back there.”

“The defense was definitely strong the whole game, Northwestern was just down there a lot more in the second half,” senior Alicia Burkhardt said. “It takes the whole team to play defense, not just the defenders, and I really think they did a great job not letting many goals in, especially our goalie.”

Northwestern added to its lead when Jordan Nielsen cleaned up a loose ball in front of Salisbury’s goal. Page made it a 3-0 game when she punched in her second goal just over two minutes later.

“Even one goal tends to shut us down,” Makhoul said. “Our mental game has been the toughest to overcome. I think it comes from years of being on the bottom and the baby steps we have taken to show progress. But the girls are making progress. And the first half of this game showed it.”

Burkhardt agrees how much of an impact opponent goals can have on their minds.

“We just need to get out of the mindset that as soon as the other team scores the game is over,” Burkhardt said. “We did a great job of that in the Northern Lehigh and Becahi games because we played the whole time, and didn’t slow down when the other teams scored.”

On the other end of the field, the shots are starting to come for Makhoul’s group. The next step is to put some of those shots into the back of the cage.

“We are getting more opportunities on goal, which is very exciting to see as a player and a coach,” Makhoul said. “It is a step in the right direction. As we’ve been working on defense, we have also been working on offense and shooting is a major thing we have been working on.”

“We do get plenty of good looks on goal, [but] our main struggle though seems to be finishing,” Burkhardt said. “We have been working on that at practice, and we hope to see more improvement and score some goals in our games that are coming up.”

The Falcons are 1-6 overall and 0-6 in Colonial League play this season.