For many seniors at Northwestern Lehigh, the alarm clock never went off last Friday morning.

It was Senior Skip Day, so they were taking part in a day seniors normally circle on their calendar. Or these days put into their phones.

Then there were the seniors on the softball team who dutifully got up and headed to school just like any other day. After all, the rule is that if you are absent on the day of a game, you are ineligible to play in that game.

The seniors were all in class Friday and were rewarded when they reached their goal and beat Palisades 5-4 to become league champions for the second straight season.

Many of those seniors were a big part of leading Northwestern to getting gold medals around their necks that night at Patriots Park in Allentown.

Sage Toman and Izzy Akelaitis, who are both seniors, teamed with sophomore Abby Dunstan to mount a come-from-behind rally that stretched over the final two innings.

With Palisades (16-5) up 2-1 going to the bottom of the fifth, Akelaitis picked up the first of two singles she would have late in the game to give the Lady Tigers a base runner.

Dunstan then smashed a ball over the center field fence to give Northwestern (19-3) its first lead of the game at 3-2.

Dunstan’s home run gives her a six-game hitting streak during which she is hitting .450 (9-for-20) with a home run, eight runs scored and 10 runs driven in.

“I think it’s a mentality,” said Dunstan, who is now batting .513 this season. “I know that if I don’t get a hit that my team will pick me up and having that trust makes it 10 times easier at the plate because I don’t really have to worry.”

The lead did not last long as a fielding error was followed by an RBI double by Catie Russo to tie the game 3-3. On the play, Russo was thrown out at third to end the inning when she tried to stretch the double into a triple.

In true Northwestern fashion, the Tigers came right back in the bottom of the sixth as sophomore Lily Kinnon led off with a bloop single to left and moved to second on a groundout by Rylee McGinley. Toman reached on an infield single, pushing Kinnon to third.

Toman quickly swiped second to put two runners in scoring position with two outs. Akelaitis, who reached the 100-hit milestone for her career earlier in the season, jumped on an offering from pitcher Karlye Teman and ripped it into left field to drive in two runs for a 5-3 lead.

“I think my eyes went wide open on that one because I was looking for a pitch I could hit and that was the one,” said Akelaitis. “I knew I just needed to keep it simple and get a base hit to score those two runs to get us ahead. I was just glad that we got those two extra runs, and we didn’t have to go into extra innings.”

The Lady Pirates didn’t seem to care that they were now the hunters and had just one inning to make something happen. Rhiley Paniktera led off the seventh with a soft line drive over the bag at second and into center field to get on base.

A fielding error put two runners on, and two groundballs moved the runners along, bringing in Paniktera to make it a 5-4 game, with Teman on third base with two outs. Ailish Kelleher grounded a ball to first where Shelby Mitman fielded the ball cleanly and touched the bag ahead of Kelleher to end the game.

“Izzy thrives in those moments and to have that part of the lineup [the middle of the order] coming up was like icing on the cake for me,” said coach Kate Farber, who also praised pitcher Emma Freeman, who threw a complete game and stayed poised on the mound despite five Northwestern errors, all of which came from the fourth inning on and resulted in three unearned runs. “Izzy is just mentally wired to thrive in those situations and I knew that even if she wasn’t going to necessarily get a hit that she was going to put the ball in play and that’s what we needed.”

“I knew our bats were just going to keep coming back because whenever they scored a run, we came right back, so it was great to know that my team was going to help me with the bats,” said Freeman. “We did have some miscues defensively, but we were able to pick it up and come back in the last innings to win and head into districts.”

The Lady Tigers open district play Friday against the winner of the quarterfinal game between Bethlehem Catholic and Wilson.

The Colonial League championship is the first for Northwestern Lehigh since 2021, but they were in the championship game in each of the last two seasons as well, falling to Bangor in 2022 and Palmerton last season.

For Farber, who is in her first season at Northwestern Lehigh after leading the Northern Lehigh program for seven seasons, the championship is her first since 2018.

“It was a bummer but worth it,” admitted Sage Toman, of having to skip her senior skip day. “It was 100-percent worth it. Gold medals are always worth it.”