For the third season in a row, Northwestern Lehigh and Allentown Central Catholic met in the District 11 Class 2A boys lacrosse final.

In 2022, it was the Vikings prevailing and a year ago the Tigers captured their first district championship with a win over Central Catholic.

This time around, the Vikings again came out on top at Lehigh University’s Frank Banko Field when they downed the Tigers 17-6.

While the two teams play in different leagues and don’t often meet in most sports until the postseason, their lacrosse battles have become classics and grew out of the football rivalry between the two schools when they met in district playoffs when both teams were 4A schools.

That ended when Northwestern was moved down to 3A for the 2022 season, but for lacrosse both teams are in 2A and have a number of football players who cross over to play lacrosse in the spring, which helps fuel the rivalry.

The first two quarters of the game were classics. The crowd cringed with every hard hit and applauded wildly as the two teams found themselves tied 3-3 after the first quarter of play.

Northwestern senior midfielder Devon Hildebrand got the first goal of the game only to see the Vikings get the next two goals, which came within 1:22 seconds of each other.

Not to be outdone, the Tigers (12-8-0) got the next two goals.

On the first goal, a pair of freshmen in Braydon Uricchio and Michael Lagowy teamed up as Uricchio took a feed from his classmate and put it on goal to tie the game. Next, it was Blaine Snyder’s turn as he fired a shot that sailed past goalie Chris Burke to go up 3-2.

Central Catholic (12-7-0) then played for a last shot and Luke Shimko got his second goal of the game to knot the score.

The two teams combined for six first-quarter penalties and three more in the second quarter, with the Tigers collecting five of the nine trips to the box.

Snyder got his second goal of the night to open the second quarter and give Northwestern a 4-3 edge, but the Vikings looked to pull away with four unanswered goals and a 7-4 lead with 2:24 left in the second quarter.

Snyder, a senior and the school’s all-time leading scorer, got his third goal of the night and the 143rd of his high school career, to pull Northwestern back to within two goals at 7-5.

“Honestly, I thought we played pretty sloppy in that first half, and we had to play a lot of man-down lacrosse because of the penalties,” said Tigers coach Marcus Janda. “I thought we could have been up at halftime, but a lot of mental errors gave them opportunities. I was telling the guys that the first five minutes was going to dictate the second half and they came out swinging and we didn’t.”

Central Catholic used those first five minutes to send a message as they added to their lead with goals from Tate Shoemaker and senior defenseman Jack Foley, whose goal was the first of his varsity career.

Three more unanswered goals moved the Central Catholic lead to 12-5 with 3:19 left in the third quarter.

Hildebrand responded with his second goal of the night, sailing a shot over Burke’s right shoulder to cut the lead to 12-6, but Shimko had some late quarter heroics getting his fourth goal of the game, again hitting with: 02 left on the clock.

The Tigers came into the game without defenseman Jared Meck and then lost freshman defenseman Michael Lagowy to a concussion, leaving their defense scrambling for solutions against Central’s high-powered offense. The Vikings scored four more times in the final quarter of the game for the 17-6 win.

“I don’t want to complain about depth issues, but when I lose a guy to a concussion and a second guy is already out, it becomes a game of attrition and if we get into a battle like that, it’s not good for us,” said Janda. “Lagowy is my left-handed feeder and on a team with predominantly right-handed finishers, it’s the left-handed guy that really makes the offense and we saw our offense get discombobulated when we lost him.”

While Central goes on to open the PIAA tournament against the runner-up of District 12, the season came to an end for the Tigers in their attempt to repeat as District 11 champions.