To describe the Northwestern Lehigh softball team in one word, intense first comes to mind.

The Tigers come out strong and refuse to let up on their opponents until the game is in hand. They come out spraying the ball around the field, hitting home runs and stealing bases. Their defense may have a miscue here and there, but they come up with big plays to help themselves out. They also have solid pitching to keep opponent’s hitters at bay.

The result on Monday was a 12-2 win over Pen Argyl, moving the Lady Tigers record to 12-1 in the Colonial League and 14-1 overall. On Tuesday, they tacked on another win as they downed Southern Lehigh 16-1.

“We always like to come out strong and jump on the other team early,” said senior Molly Mitman. “We don’t let up. Our coach keeps telling us to be aggressive and so we look to take advantage of anything that we can.”

Mitman had a double and two walks, scoring runs all three times in the win over the Lady Green Knights on Monday. Mitman followed that up by reaching base three times again on Tuesday, drawing two more walks and scoring two runs while swiping three bases against the Lady Spartans.

Morgan Farthing had a single, double and reached on an error against Pen Argyl (6-7 Colonial, 8-8 overall) and stole four bases, while Sage Toman had two hits and scored two runs and Brynn Balliet tripled and homered. Balliet’s fifth inning solo home run locked up the win for Northwestern ending the game on the 10-run rule. In all, Northwestern stole eight bases against Pen Argyl.

Against Southern Lehigh (8-5, 10-5) it was Adana Funk who led the team with three hits and two RBI while Olivia Stofflet had two hits and drove in three runs, as did Farthing. Toman, Marissa Christman and Kylie Zentz also collected two hits in the win, with Funk and Izzy Akelaitis hitting home runs for the Lady Tigers.

“We have girls who play the game hard and can help us at the plate and they also run the bases very well,” said coach Josh Zimmerman. “We try to get teams down early and they just stay after them throughout the game. It’s not that we can’t come from behind, but we don’t like to put ourselves in that position, so we go all out from the first pitch on.”

Mitman, who will attend the University of Hartford to study Criminal Justice, finds herself in a good spot in the lineup, batting fourth with players who get on base in front of her and quality hitters behind her who drive her in. It’s made the game a lot of fun for Mitman.

“This is a great team and we have so many good players,” she said. “I like where I am in the lineup because we can take advantage of our speed and there are usually runners on base for me and I know the girls behind me can drive me in, so it’s a lot of fun to play on this team.”

Northwestern Lehigh is currently the top seed for the District 11 Class 4A rankings and tied with Bangor for the top spot in the Colonial League, with Palmerton lurking just a game behind. Northwestern wraps up its regular season at home against Catasauqua (2-11, 3-11) on Monday.

If Zimmerman can spread one message to his team as it prepares for the postseason, it would be to just carry on with business as usual.

“Sometimes when things don’t go right for a player or even for the team, players start to press and try to do too much,” Zimmerman said. “We have to avoid that and just keep doing what we have been doing all season and the players have to realize that they’re playing really well and executing really well, so just keep doing what they’ve been doing and not press.”