Northwestern boys soccer continued its dominance Wednesday night, as the Tigers defeated Wilson for the second time this season with a 6-0 shutout in the Colonial League semifinal at Lehighton.

With the victory, the Tigers are now on a collision course with Moravian Academy on Saturday morning to battle for the Colonial League championship.

The Tigers wasted no time, as they immediately began to control possession of the ball early and often in the first half. They would finally be rewarded about six-and-a-half minutes into the game when junior Logan Mesics set up senior Jacob van Lierop for the game’s first goal.

It appeared early on that the Tigers’ quick pace and defensive pressure became too difficult for Wilson to keep up with, forcing the Warriors to play at the Tigers’ level, according to coach Nathan Hunsicker.

“I thought we played a really strong first half, and kind of took Wilson out of their game plan early on, and kind of forced them to come out and play a little bit more of an aggressive style than what they would’ve liked,” he said.

That strong first half resulted in Northwestern being rewarded with another four goals. Almost 19 minutes into the half, senior Nate Kinzel capitalized off a beautiful passing play set up by Van Leirop and sophomore Cole Mertz. Over five minutes later, senior Jack Mauro found the back of the net, and just six-and-a-half minutes later, Mertz joined the goal-scoring party, courtesy of van Lierop. Then with a minute and ten seconds remaining in the half, Mesics became the fifth different goal scorer of the game for the Tigers with assists from both Van Lierop and junior Caelan Stangil.

With a goal and three assists, van Leirop continued to rack up the points, and is now up to 54 goals and 23 assists on the season.

“At points it gets a little boring at times, but it’s fun,” he said. “It’s my senior year, so you got to have fun.”

Although Northwestern dominated on the scoreboard, it was its defense that also shined as it prevented Wilson from recording a single shot during the first half. Much was the same during the second half, as the Tigers held the Warriors to only one shot on goal, and blocked another shot attempt on the goal line off a corner kick.

With this level of dominance, coach Hunsicker credits the work his team puts in outside of its regular practices and the experience it has with each other.

“I would say it’s not as easy as it looks,” he said. “We work hard pretty much year round, and a lot of these guys play club together in the offseason as well. So there’s a lot of chemistry out there on the field, and it certainly shows. The results speak for themselves.”

“It’s definitely good knowing that we can compete with anyone; knowing that we can put in 80 minutes,” van Lierop said about his team’s performance. “If we play how we can play, we can beat anyone. We have some great talent through the midfield and the back line up top.”

Despite their defense not being tested much in this game, coach Hunsicker is still impressed with how they’ve performed and how important they are.

“If the other team can’t score, and if the other team’s not getting off shots or obviously not having a lot of opportunities to score, it makes winning in the equation happen a lot more often than not,” he said. “Credit to our back line; our goalkeeper Brandon has had a phenomenal season. He wasn’t tested too much tonight, but those guys are the backbone of what we do and intrical pieces of our success going forward. Nights like today, they didn’t have to do a ton because the midfield and our attack kept Wilson on their heels, but we’ve definitely got to lean on them going forward.”

Coach Hunsicker is already preparing for how much his team will need to be ready on Saturday against a familiar opponent in Moravian Academy.

“They’re a strong squad, and we’ve kind of put together a nice rivalry with them the last few years,” he said about Moravian. “I think probably four out of the last five years, I think we’ve met in either the semifinals or the championship game of league playoffs, so we’re really familiar with each other. We just have to make sure we’re keeping our heads, play our possession-based soccer, finish our chances that we get, and I think we’ll be alright.

REMATCH ... These two teams previously played each other on Oct. 2, with Northwestern winning 4-0.

DOMINANCE ... Northwestern has not lost a game to a Colonial League opponent since the 2022 Colonial League final, where it lost 2-1 in overtime to Southern Lehigh. That loss is one of only two for the Tigers over the last three seasons, their other defeat coming in last year’s state playoffs against Camp Hill, and has an overall record of 70-2 over those three seasons.