BRUNSWICK – Coming into Wednesday’s in-state match up with the University of New England, Bowdoin’s women’s soccer coach Brianne Weaver has had her team working on their passing game the last few practices. The results were plentiful as the Polar Bears found the back of the net three times, all off assists to beat the Nor’Easters, 3-0 at Pickard Field.

“We have been working very hard on our passing all weekend,” Weaver said after her team dropped a 3-1 decision at Middlebury on Saturday. “We talked about it at the beginning of the game that we’ve put all this time into it in practice, let’s go out and show that today.”

Morgen Gallagher was the beneficiary of solid passing, scoring a pair of goals that were both assisted by Julia Patterson. Alia Haskins set up Lynn Farquhar for the other Bowdoin goal.

Just over seven minutes into the contest, Gallagher scored the game’s first goal when Patterson possessed the ball at midfield and broke to the right side before finding the junior. The forward blasted the ball underneath UNE goalie Emily Ashman.

“She has a great vision going forward,” Gallagher said of her teammate. “She always finds those diagonal balls very well. She got a good run down the side and I was able to get on the end of it.”

Bowdoin continued to possess the ball for the majority of the first 45 minutes and with 13:39 on the clock, Farquhar hit the corner of the net off a Haskins pass to give the Polar Bears a two-goal cushion.

“Scoring has been a challenge for us in some of our matches,” said Weaver. “Again, we talked about let’s be confident and let’s go in and take some chances. They executed brilliantly with some nice goals today.”

The score stood at 2-0 at the intermission. Bowdoin outshot the visitors 6-1, while holding the advantage in corner kicks, 10-1.

The Polar Bears (3-3-1) continued their precise passing coming to begin the second half. With a little over 35 minutes on the clock, the Patterson to Gallagher tandem struck again, again displaying crisp passes.

“We’ve been working on our passing quite a bit in practice. The speed of our play and our passes,” Gallagher said. “We’ve been getting our passes intercepted a lot so we’ve been doing drills emphasizing on our ankles and receiving our passes so we can turn quickly.”

Despite trailing 3-0, the Nor’Easters still worked on putting together solid play to close out the game.

“They’re playing some good soccer and I think we stepped up and put together a good second half,” UNE coach Carly Gettler said. “We tend to be a possession oriented team and I thought we settled down defensively and connected more passes. We were a little frantic in the first half, but that has kind of been our season, wait and see in the first half then put it together in the second.”

Still, UNE will learn from this game going forward. The squad travels to Curry College on Saturday.

“I think our biggest challenge right now is that we mentally need to step up to big teams as we still sometimes play a little hesitant against them,” added Gettler.

Bowdoin completed the contest outshooting UNE 12-3. Ashman made seven saves in net for UNE, while Isabel Ball, Penny Rocchio and Sabrina Albanese all spent time in the twine for Bowdoin, making one save. Bowdoin travels to Husson on Sunday for a 1 p.m. contest.

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