Do you wake up sluggish in the morning? Maybe you even show up for work not doing your best work. Then, later in the day, things start to get rolling and you can take on the world, right?

That’s how many games have gone for the Lady Tiger lacrosse team, which has developed a knack for being a slow starter. It has happened in each of the team’s last two games, a 16-7 loss to Liberty and a 16-5 loss to Pleasant Valley Tuesday night at Tiger Stadium.

“That’s something that we have tried to emphasize, that we have to start from the very first whistle. Sometimes it takes us a while to get into a game and that has been an issue for us,” said Tigers coach Bridget Cerciello.

Against Pleasant Valley, the Lady Bears (10-0) came out aggressively with freshman Rylee Rath netting her first goal of the game with just 1:10 having clicked off the clock. With just over 5:00 gone, Olivia Iandoli added a goal and :21 later, Rath picked up another before Devon Bush went on the attack and scored three straight goals. This all came within the first 6:08 of the game, giving defending East Penn Conference champ and 2022 District 11 Class 3A runner up Pleasant Valley a 6-0 lead that the Tigers could not come back from.

Bush, a sophomore, had five goals in the first half, with the second one putting her at the 100-goal mark for her high school career.

Sophomore Cara Thomas picked up the first goal for Northwestern Lehigh with 14:39 left in the first half and just under 4:00 later, a shot on goal was saved by goalie Abygail Borger, but then popped out of the webbing of her stick and just crossed the plane of the goal to make it 7-2.

Bush and Rath would both finish with five goals, while Iandoli had three, and Madison Fava and Riley Green both had one.

“We knew this was going to be a tough game against a hard opponent,” said Cerciello. “Pleasant Valley is a talented team and they’re undefeated, so we knew it was a challenge for us. The girls had a great mindset about it and accepted the challenge. We know that to get better, we have to play good teams that make us play our best and give us that challenge. That’s how you get better as a player and as a program.”

The loss drops Northwestern Lehigh to 5-4 this season as the battle for their first appearance in the District 11 postseason, which gets underway next month. The Lady Tigers have a difficult road to the end of the season. Of their nine remaining games, five are against teams with winning records. Northwestern plays Southern Lehigh (5-3) and Moravian Academy (5-2) twice each and play Emmaus (9-2) over the final four weeks of the season.

“We are excited to play Southern Lehigh Thursday and the other district playoff challengers on the schedule,” said Cerciello. “The girls are looking forward to getting on the field and getting after them.”