A year ago, the basketball season was delayed just prior to when it was to get underway, and the season was played with an abbreviated schedule and constant doubts about just how long it would go on.

It ended with Northwestern Lehigh winning its first Colonial League championship in 14 seasons and making a trip to the district semifinals.

Fast forward one year and the season opens with less concerns about COVID and Northwestern Lehigh is in good shape to defend its league title. Gone are six senior players from last season, including three of the top five scorers on the team.

“Each of those six girls throughout the year all had their moment at one time or another and I thought we had good team contributions. They were six seniors and not all of them were starting, but they accepted their role and found ways to contribute,” said coach Chris Deutsch.

Returning are players like junior Paige Sevrain, who has led the team in both scoring and rebounding each of the last two years, scoring a total of 495 points in two varsity seasons. Fellow junior Sydney Nyce is also back after averaging just under five points per game last season, fifth on the team.

“What I love about Paige is how she keeps such an even keel; you look at her and you can’t tell if we’re up by 20 or down by 20. We ask a lot of her, and she comes through. She can hit inside and then step outside and hit shots and she can handle it all,” said Deutsch. “Sydney got better for us as the year went on. Look at that championship game [against Palmerton] where she came out and hit three, threes for us and that was huge. In that first half, I will go to my grave thinking that if she didn’t play like she did in that first half, we would have been out of the game.”

Last year’s team featured five sophomores and all five are set to play more minutes this season than last season. In addition to Sevrain and Nyce, Daniella Lister, Nina Miller and Maci Fisher are all juniors this season, while Camryn Fitch opens the season as a sophomore after having played last season as a freshman.

Sevrain has quietly grown into being a leader on the court for the Lady Tigers. The soft-spoken junior does not rely on words to lead, but lets her actions speak for themselves.

“I’ve been working a lot on trying to improve my game,” said Sevrain, whose older sisters, Gabby and Sydney are both Northwestern graduates. “I’ve been working out with them and going to other training things to help improve my game. I did better last season in being more active and helping my teammates and I just keep trying to get better.”

Sevrain is certainly a known entity and other teams will design defenses around stopping her. The good news is that first, Sevrain has grown more used to dealing with added coverage like what she started to see last season and she also has the ability and the willingness to find open players and get the ball to them.

That is where the strong, young supporting cast will come in handy for Northwestern.

“Eight of the 18 players in our JV/varsity program are freshmen, so we have a lot of youth that we’re starting to develop,” said Deutsch. “We expect big contributions from Cara Thomas, whose sister Erica played for us a couple years ago and was a 1,000-point scorer, the two Balliets (Brynn and Brook), we expect big contributions from both. Maci Fisher was with us last year and played well and we have Nina Miller, who is a junior this year. There is another freshman, Riley McGinley, who played very well in our scrimmage”

Rachel Dorney, who played with the team two seasons ago before sitting out last season, is also returning to the team and Deutsch believes she will be an important addition to the roster.

The season opens Friday with a non-league game at Whitehall, but the highlight of the early schedule is a rematch of last year’s Colonial League championship game with Palmerton when the Blue Bombers play at Northwestern next Thursday.