In a rematch of last year’s District 11 Class 2A championship game, Northwestern Lehigh may have lost the game, but the Tigers delivered a message to Allentown Central Catholic, which beat them 13-3 in that game last season.

This time around, the Tigers were a handful for the Vikings (8-5), who won an 11-10 home game against Northwestern.

“We played a good game and had ourselves in position to win. I think they know that our guys aren’t intimidated by them and that we are looking forward to a rematch in districts,” said coach Marcus Janda as his team prepared for another big game, this time against Emmaus.

Unfortunately, things did not go as well against the Hornets (11-4), who came into Tiger Stadium and left with a 10-3 victory over Northwestern (9-5). Goalie Bailen Smargiassi made 15 saves in the game for Northwestern.

Offensively against Emmaus, the Tigers got goals from Cody Hallock, Stone Sosnovik, and Cade Christopher. Hallock just returned from an injury and is seeing limited playing time for now, taking the field when Northwestern is playing a man up in games.

“They are a talented team, and they knew who our players are; they did a great job planning against Austin and Stone and they really took it to us,” said Janda. “I also don’t think that we played our best game, especially on the offensive end of the field. Our defense did everything it could to keep us in the game, but eventually when you are playing that much defense, you fall apart.

“The offense settled for low percentage shots all night, but part of that was because of [Emmaus]; they did a great job. They are a talented team, and they are well coached.”

After the two losses, the Tigers took out some frustration on Northampton, beating the Konkrete Kids 14-4. This time around, Smargiassi continued to display his skills in goals with 12 saves in the game.

The offense was able to rack up some goals in the win with Austin Sosnovik picking up six goals in the game with Christopher adding three and Stone Sosnovik and Devon Hildebrand contributing two goals each to beat the Kids (9-8). Blaine Snyder, Hallock, Josh Wambold, and Braxton Lakatosh all scored once in the game.

The Tigers, the top-ranked team in the District 2A rankings, will host the top team in 3A Thursday when Parkland (14-2) visits New Tripoli. Parkland’s two losses were both to teams outside of District 11 and were by a total of three goals, having fallen to Spring-Ford 10-9 in early April and then dropping a 10-8 battle to Garnet Valley this past weekend.