Apparently, Tigers like chocolate. So do Falcons.

The Northwestern Tigers and Lower Dauphin Falcons, the District 3 champion, will meet for the second straight year in the PIAA 3A boys soccer championship in Hershey Saturday night.

Last year’s battle ended in a 3-0 win for Lower Dauphin, who completed an undefeated season with the win over Northwestern. This season, it’s the Tigers who come in undefeated, looking to win their first state championship.

“I think I would have rather been playing almost anyone else from that side of the bracket,” said Northwestern coach Nate Hunsicker. “They’re a really tough team, and they had 120 or so team goals on the year, so they’re definitely an offensive powerhouse. They’re going to be really a tall task for us to try to stop, or at least contain.”

The game figures to be a battle of defenses, as Lower Dauphin (24-2-1) has allowed just 12 goals all season, while Northwestern has given up only six. As Hunsicker pointed out, the Falcons offense is explosive, but Northwestern can also find the back of the net, having scored 101 goals on the season.

With the prediction that goals will be at a premium, Hunsicker believes that the best way to win is to score the first goal of the game.

“I don’t see the score getting out of hand,” he said. “We’re going to do our best to keep it as low-scoring as possible, and I think the first goal is going to be really key, because they’re not used to playing behind at all.”

Northwestern (25-0) has been led defensively by senior goalie Taylor Wanamaker, who made nine saves in the semifinal win over Archbishop Wood and has been phenomenal all season for the Tigers, who face their biggest test of the season against Lower Dauphin.

“Our whole team really buys into our defense-first philosophy, but our back four and Taylor, especially in the playoffs, have really stood tall and made key plays for us,” said Hunsicker. “Taylor’s district championship game was hands-down his best game of the season, and even in the semifinals, when we went up 2-0, they came right back with a point-blank shot and Taylor made a huge save.”

Offensively, senior Noah Meyers has 24 goals on the season to lead the team, with four of those goals coming in the last two games. Meyers has picked up the slack for fellow senior Kenny Gawelko (18 goals), who has gone five straight games without a goal after leading Northwestern to the league championship. Gawelko scored the only goal of the Colonial League title game in the Tigers 1-0 win over Notre Dame (Green Pond).

If Lower Dauphin keys too much on the hot-shooting Meyers, Gawelko has the ability to take over a game and pace Northwestern’s offense. Gawelko was the Colonial League Player of the Year and has the ability to take over a game.

“Noah’s a streaky scorer who scores in bunches, so we’re hoping to ride him out for one more game,” said Hunsicker. “Kenny’s been serving some different roles for us lately, but he and Noah give us some pretty powerful offensive weapons of our own.”

Jackson Becher, who scored his 100th career goal in the Falcons quarterfinal win over West Allegheny, leads Lower Dauphin’s offense. Two of those goals came in last year’s championship win over Northwestern.

While Northwestern had to endure the loss of seven senior starters from last year’s team, they have spent this season battling to get back to Hershey for another shot at a championship. Nobody was quite sure just how good this year’s Northwestern team would be, but with strong senior leadership and young players who developed very quickly this season, things are finishing up on the big stage for the Tigers.

“We weren’t quite sure what to expect, because we lost a lot of three-and four-year starters,” said Hunsicker. “We have a lot of kids in our lineup who never really played a lot of varsity minutes in their career, and they have just stepped up to the task. We knew we would be in the mix to compete in the league. We beat three different District 3 teams this year, so we knew we had something special cooking and we started to believe that getting back to the championship was in the realm of possibility.

“If we do what we do well, we have a chance.”