Twice in their first three games, the Northwestern Lehigh boys lacrosse team put 21 goals on the board.

The Tigers (3-1) beat Bethlehem Catholic 21-2 in the season opener and, after an 8-4 win over Northampton, downed Pleasant Valley 21-7.

The Hawks and Bears are a combined 0-7 on the season, but 21 goals are still an accomplishment. Nazareth (3-2) got a bit of revenge for its East Penn Conference colleagues with an 11-3 win over Northwestern recently to hand the Tigers their first setback of the season.

Against Pleasant Valley, senior Devon Hildebrand showed he could score from pretty much any distance and any angle as he set a Northwestern Lehigh team record for goals in a game with nine.

The first half had the Tigers up 8-5 at halftime and Northwestern players were not at all happy with the production they showed to open the game and renewed their focus.

At halftime, Hildebrand already had four goals in the first half and freshman teammate Mike Lagowy already had two. Another freshman, Tyler Kaas and sophomore Braxton Lakatosh also had first-half goals.

“Actually, I feel like our offense is just starting to mesh well,” said Hildebrand. “That first half was nothing for us to hang our hat on. It just wasn’t a very good half by us. In the second half we turned it up and I’m really proud of our guys.”

The style of play became more physical later in the first half and a series of hard hits on the sideline led to three penalties and the ejection of Pleasant Valley’s Alex Ecker.

While Northwestern remained calm and poised through the melee, the Pleasant Valley sideline erupted with Ecker and an assistant coach getting into a shouting match. The Bears stayed close for a while, but the cooler heads of the Tigers went on to route them in the second half by staying focused on winning the game.

“I feel like we were rushing it a lot in the first half and trying to push transition and our passing wasn’t very good,” said Hildebrand. “In the second half we took a step back, surveyed the field and played a more under control style of lacrosse.”

Hildebrand opened the scoring in the second half and would score four more times in the third quarter before adding one final tally in the fourth quarter. Kaas added two more third quarter goals to earn his hat trick and Lagowy and Stone Sosnovik would finish with hat tricks, while Sosnovik went one further with a fourth goal late in the game. Josh Wambold and Braxton Lakatosh added a goal each and Wambold assisted on two other goals.

“We have to come out faster,” said senior attacker Blaine Snyder, who scored the 100th goal of his career earlier in the season. “It seems we came out flat, and today was a good representation of that. We just didn’t score enough in that first half, and we just weren’t running a settled offense like we did in the second half.”

Snyder, a two-sport athlete who was part of the Tigers’ state runner-up football team, was happy to get the career milestone behind him so he and his teammates can focus solely on winning and defending their district title.

“It feels great,: Snyder said. “And it was good to get it over with early in the season, so that’s not hanging around.”

By the time this season is over, Snyder could own the top spot as the program’s all-time scorer and assists leader, surpassing Austin Sosnovik, who graduated after last season’s district championship.

Sosnovik finished with 135 goals and 53 assists and Snyder stands at 104 goals and 45 assists.

Goalie Bailen Smargiassi continues to stretch his lead as the program’s all-time saves leader as he stands at 441 saves for his high school career. Meanwhile, Hildebrand had 15 career goals through his junior season and has doubled that mark this season with 30 goals and 24 assists in his career.