Coming into the season, you could not count out the Lady Tigers in their pursuit of back to back Colonial League championships, but most just did not see a repeat in their future.

Yes, they had lost a lot of firepower from their championship team a year earlier, but their young players always develop well and adjust to the rigors of playing varsity basketball, so opponents had to keep an eye on them, but the loss of players like Ali Lister and Sydney Sevrain among others, had many thinking that the 2021-2022 season might be chalked up as a year of growing for a young Northwestern team.

There were some early bumps, and the team was 3-2 to open the year and still looking to make its mark.

By the time the New Year’s holiday rolled around, Northwestern was a lackluster 5-3, but 2021 was gone and a team with a renewed attitude took the court to win its next four games by 20 or more points.

Not done there, Northwestern Lehigh won another seven straight games to move its record to 16-3.

The Tigers had served notice that they were looking to put another league statue in their trophy case. A loss to Palmerton, their second of the season against the team viewed as their biggest roadblock to winning another championship, may have dampened spirits among onlookers, but the Lady Tigers continued to attack and finished 18-4.

The Tigers dispatched Pen Argyl and Bangor in the league tournament, setting up their rematch with Palmerton in the championship game. While it was nothing close to their usual margin of victory, a 40-38 win over the Blue Bombers was all they needed to again bring a league championship trophy home to New Tripoli.

“We never got down on ourselves,” said junior Maci Fisher. “We knew we lost a lot of talented players from last season, but we stayed confident, and we worked hard.”

In the win over Palmerton, junior Paige Sevrain led the team with 18 points and one of the new faces, freshman Brook Balliet contributed with 12. Much like during the regular season though, there were other role players that made the team league champions. Looking back to last season’s league championship game the players who were with the team then but had moved on or were not available, had scored a total of 38 points in the win over Palmerton, leaving a lot of holes to fill.

Most of the attention in this year’s championship game went to Sevrain and Balliet, the two top scorers for Northwestern, but coach Chris Deutsch quickly credited the rest of the roster with doing little things to get the team the win and contribute to their success during the regular season.

Fisher was one of the players who might not have put her name in the box score as prominently as the big scorers but did everything the team looked to her to do, finishing with six points and feeding the ball to the scorers throughout the game.

On defense, Fisher pulled down five rebounds and was a thorn in the side of the Palmerton offense. Fisher admittedly had a tough game in the quarterfinals but came up as strong as anybody in the semis and the championship game to help put medals around the necks of the Lady Tigers.

“I really have to credit the coaches because they gave me a lot of constructive criticism and helped me to pick up my game,” said Fisher. “I really took that quarterfinal game to heart and learned from it because I wanted to do better for my team. We worked all season for this, and it really was a team effort for all of us.”

When the final buzzer sounded, Deutsch uncharacteristically leaped with his hands in the air and then gave a Tiger Woods style fist pump to celebrate. On his way across the court to do postgame interviews, Deutsch cheered on the Tiger Pack, the student section that was loud and proud throughout the game for Northwestern Lehigh.

“I will probably be sore tomorrow from that,” Deutsch said. “It’s been a long time since I did anything like that, but I am just so proud of how this team really came together and how most people didn’t see us getting back here this season, but our players made it happen. All season long they just kept working hard and battled for everything that they accomplished, and I am so happy for them that it all paid off in this way.”