Northwestern Lehigh boys’ soccer keeps picking up wins as it added another three over the past week and is now 15-0-0 overall and 11-0-0 in Colonial League play.

The wins also keep adding to its coaches climbing career win total which now stands at 262 after he surpassed the 250 win milestone earlier this season.

Nate Hunsicker is in his 14th season as the head of the boys soccer program, and he has no plans to leave anytime soon. He has a potential date in mind, but it is still well down the road as he looks to coach his two sons who are currently in fourth grade and sixth grade.

When he coaches his two sons, it won’t be the first time he coaches a family member as his assistant coach Derek Reinert, who is also his cousin, was on the first JV team that Hunsicker coached at Northwestern.

“They’re chomping at the bit, and I am definitely looking forward to it,” said Hunsicker. “I coach my oldest on a club team and my youngest plays on a different club team and we butt heads a little bit sometimes, so it will be a very interesting dynamic.”

Coaching at the JV level gave Hunsicker the itch to move up to varsity and when the opportunity arose at Northwestern, he took the job and hasn’t looked back since.

It took a couple of seasons to get the program on the right path but once he did, things just started to happen and with time Hunsicker has built the program into one of the more consistently successful programs in the area.

“It’s crazy to think how far I’ve come personally and how far our team is going and how we have advanced and just the success we have had, particularly over the last 10 years or so,” said Hunsicker. “It has to start somewhere and I really had the itch to coach varsity and when Mr. Zimmerman (AD Jason Zimmerman) called me and asked if I would be interested I jumped on it right away.”

Hunsicker believes that the crop of current senior players will go down as perhaps the most successful group of players that he has had come through the program. Their success includes a state championship in 2022 and deep runs into every level of the playoffs.

“It’s a good group of kids,” he said, “and obviously, their season isn’t done, and I would have to look at the numbers but between all four of their seasons, I think that it’s going to be a hard mark for anyone to pass going forward with all of the success that they had and the fact that a lot of them have been varsity contributors for four years. It’s a special group of kids.”

One of those seniors, Jake Van Lierop, continues to run over opposing defenses and now has 46 goals and 17 assists on the season for a total of 109 points. Van Lierop crossed the 200 point plateau late last week for his varsity career and 77 career goals.

With spots in the Colonial League and District 11 playoffs already set, Northwestern has three games remaining to finish out their regular season schedule.

The Tigers have a road game at Wilson (8-2-1, 10-4-1) followed by their final home game of the season on Monday when they face Catasauqua (0-11-0, 3-11-0) and they wrap up the season with a nonleague game at Kutztown 13-1-0).