The last time Salisbury won a Colonial League girls soccer championship was in 1996. By all accounts of anyone asked around the team and school, that was also the last year Salisbury was playing for a league title. To put that into perspective, none of the current players on the Lady Falcons’ team were born yet.

With a win two days earlier in the semifinals against Saucon Valley, Salisbury was on the cusp of its first league championship in two decades. Instead, Southern Lehigh had plans of winning its second league crown in as many seasons.

The Spartans (14-5) broke a scoreless game early in the second half and added one more just beyond the midway point of the second half to secure the 2-0 victory over Salisbury (13-4-3) last Thursday in the Colonial League title game at Northern Lehigh High School.

“It hurts to lose,” Babyak said. “But it’s nice when you step back and look at the bigger picture with the fact that the girls got to this point with the adversity we had throughout the season. They could have had all of the excuses in the world to fold and say we can’t do it, but they kept doing it game after game and we got ourselves to this point.”

The Lady Spartans opened the scoring when Kristen Cocozza drilled a deep free kick 12 minutes into the second half. The goal put Salisbury in a hole that seemed insurmountable after failing to generate many quality shots.

“It wasn’t too late in the game, but it was relatively late when we gave up that goal,” Babyak said. “You feel like you have to push a little bit more. As coaches, we did make some changes that we gave up a little bit of defense to try and push some more offense. And that’s the chances you take.”

With just under 16 minutes to play, Southern Lehigh put the nail in the coffin. After a Lady Spartan crossed in a ball in front of Salisbury’s goal, Emily Jordan ripped a shot past goalie Kyra Bruns into the left side of the net.

Salisbury out-shot Southern Lehigh 8-7, but the Lady Spartans’ targets on goal were of higher quality.

“I thought we were firing out there,” Babyak said. “We played well particularly in the first half, and actually a good chunk of the second half we really played well. We still, though, struggled to generate shots. That was the biggest problem.

“We were not getting enough quality shots. That’s the bottom line. They had their chances and they finished. I give them credit. They are a good team.”

The biggest adversity Salisbury faced in the second half of the season was an inability to field a healthy lineup. The Lady Falcons were without starting midfielder Rylee Donaldson since a mid-September match against Nazareth. She was cleared for game action against Southern Lehigh. She did score on a penalty kick in Salisbury’s win over Saucon Valley, but did not see any field time in regulation or either of the two overtime periods. Kelly Gardus and Holly Bruns were also missed time due to injury late in the season.

For the first time in awhile, Salisbury was able to field its full lineup of players in the biggest game of the season. And while it failed to secure gold on a weeknight up in Slatington, there’s still plenty of soccer hopefully left for this group.

“We fell short slightly at one of our goals here, but we have another goal,” Babyak said. “We want to have a chance to win districts. It was really nice to have some players back today. Now we have to get back to our rhythm with those players, and we had that a good chunk of time today.”

In last week’s Colonial League semifinal, Salisbury and Saucon Valley played to a 1-1 tie through regulation and two overtime periods at Palisades High School. With their backs against the wall facing a penalty-kick situation, all five shooters (Caitlin Meikrantz, Erica Holben, Donaldson, Marisol Rosario and Caitlin Hoeing) connected on their shots to down the Panthers 5-3 in penalty kicks.

Meikrantz, a senior and the program’s career leader in assists, will go on to play at Elon University next fall.

The Falcons move on to this week’s District 11 tournament as the No. 3 seed in Class 3A. They faced No. 6 Tamaqua in Tuesday’s quarterfinal round. With a win, they will take on No. 7 Lehighton or No. 2 Northwestern in the semifinals.