Northwestern head coach Lissa Opolsky called it “survive and advance.”

The bottom line was that the Tigers were able to advance in districts after beating Palisades 5-2 in the Class 1A quarterfinals on Wednesday.

The start of the game was one that Opolsky and her team would have rather forgotten when it gave up an early goal to the sixth-seeded Pirates Angela Refalko, who tucked one past goaltender Gabby Gober into the corner of the cage for the early lead.

But rather than let the 1-0 deficit slow them down, No. 3 seed Northwestern seemed to take it personally and bounced right back. Brinley Rex fed Carsyn Van Norman with a perfectly-placed ball, and Van Norman picked up the first goal of the game for the Tigers, making it 1-1.

If one goal was good, Northwestern figured a couple more early goals would be great.

Cara Thomas was able to play a ball off a defender’s stick and get it past goalie Alicia Donato to put Northwestern up 2-1. Later in the first quarter, Hannah Gober made it 3-1 in favor of the Tigers, sending them into halftime on a high note.

“It was big to be able to come right back and tie the game after that early goal,” said Opolsky. “I liked the way we responded, and how we looked to keep adding on early in the game. I thought we played really well through that first quarter.”

The second quarter began much the way the first quarter started, with Palisades getting on the board early and again, Refalko was involved. This time, she was the one giving off the assist to Camila O’Donnell, who cut the lead to one goal at 3-2 as Palisades looked to pull itself back into the game.

“Overall, we played well, but we did hit a couple of spots where we got a little wonky and let down a little,” Opolsky noted. “We have a few things to clean up, but we’re happy with how we played tonight in general, and we have some time to keep working on things.”

Again, the Tigers fought off the challenge as Dani Lister gave Northwestern its two-goal lead back when she scored to make it 4-2.

From there, the two teams went into a defensive struggle until the final quarter of play when again, Lister found herself with an open look in front of the cage and poked a shot past Denato for her second goal of the night, capping the scoring in the 5-2 Northwestern win.

“We have the attitude that we have to keep coming back at teams, and not let them get to us early,” said Lister. “We hate to give up an early goal like we did and crumble like that, so it sort of motivated us to come back and make up for that and keep playing hard from there.”

BRING ON THE LIONS

… Next up for Northwestern is Moravian Academy, the number two seed in districts. The two teams met during the regular season with the Lions taking a 4-1 win on their home turf in mid-September. This game will be played at Whitehall High School Monday at 5:30 p.m. Since the earlier loss to Moravian, Northwestern has gone 12-2 coming into the rematch.