Both Nazareth and Northwestern Lehigh aspire to play deep into November this season. Although they won’t meet in the postseason due to different conferences and state classifications, they had a chance to help each other on Thursday night.
Nazareth, a Class 3A school from District 11’s Eastern Pennsylvania Conference, defeated Northwestern, a Class A opponent from the Colonial League, 3-1 at Northwestern’s Tigers Stadium.
Ava DePietro, Gianna Perillo, and Abby Wortmann scored for Nazareth (12-1), while Ohio State commit Hannah Gober scored for Northwestern (11-2). The Tigers returned 10 starters from last year’s District 11 Class A champion team.
How did they help each other? By exposing weaknesses that both teams can work on as the playoffs approach.
Nazareth faces a tough schedule ahead: District 2’s Wyoming Valley West on Saturday, followed by matchups with Parkland, Emmaus, Southern Lehigh, and Easton in the final week of the regular season. Meanwhile, Northwestern has five games remaining, including a rematch against 2023 state Class A champ Oley Valley and another against Colonial League contender Palmerton.
“You always learn from a loss,” Northwestern senior midfielder and captain Ella Dangello said. “They teach you what your Achilles heel is, what you need to work on in practice. Our coach [Lissa Opolsky] purposely gives us out-of-league and out-of-district games so we can grow from them for the league and playoffs. A loss is just as valuable as a win.”
DePietro scored with under two minutes left in the first half to put the Blue Eagles up 1-0. The game was evenly played, with both teams getting their chances. Nazareth extended its lead to 2-0 after the buzzer in the third quarter when Perillo scored off a penalty corner.
The Tigers responded when Dangello assisted on Gober’s goal to make it 2-1 three minutes into the third. With five minutes left, Opolsky tried to pull goalkeeper Ryan Smolinsky and go with an extra field player, but officials did not allow the move. Smolinsky re-entered the game, and Dangello was sidelined for two minutes. Shortly after, Wortmann sealed the win with Nazareth’s final goal.
“We knew [Northwestern] was going to be a tough team,” Nazareth senior Olivia Seidel said. “They had really good off-ball movement and passing, give-and-gos. They’re a good team, and it was a tough game. It was really good for us.”
Smolinsky made five saves for Northwestern, while Nazareth’s Teagan Moore earned the win with two saves.
Now, it’s on to the more serious games. Dangello said that the Tigers will need to adjust to the challenges ahead.
“This is our third game in four days. We’re really tired,” she said. “We didn’t come out as hard as we should have. This shows us that we need to come out strong from the beginning, not just in the second half.”
With the most difficult part of their season approaching, Seidel hopes Nazareth is ready after suffering a 4-1 loss to Stroudsburg two weeks ago.
“We started with some of the easier teams on the schedule, so we worked on scoring and ball movement,” she said. “Then we faced a tough team (Stroudsburg), and I don’t think we were fully awake. We kind of went through the motions. After losing to them, we knew we had to work harder in practice and in our off-ball movement, connecting with teammates.”
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Tim Shoemaker is a freelance writer.
By FAN – US
