The Bowdoin Orient

The men’s soccer team coasted to a 2-0 victory over University of New England Tuesday evening, bouncing back from a 2-0 loss against Middlebury this past weekend. With the win, the Polar Bears improved to 3-3-0.

After controlling play for most of the first half, Nick DiStefano ’18 scored his first career goal off of a rebound of a shot from Matt Dias-Costa ’17. Just two minutes later a Nor’easter defender accidentally deflected a cross from Dias-Costa into his own net, giving the Polar Bears an insurance goal that ended up sealing the game.

The Polar Bears continued to outplay the Nor’easters throughout the second half. Although they could not put together another goal, they still cruised to a 2-0 victory.

Last weekend, the Polar Bears dropped a crucial conference game to Middlebury 2-0, lowering their NESCAC record to 1-3. The Bowdoin loss also marked the fourth straight shutout victory for the Panthers.

The Polar Bears had many chances early on in the game, but were unable to capitalize on any of them. In the 22nd minute, the Panthers took advantage of a corner kick as Middlebury’s Tom Bean’s header escaped Bowdoin keeper Noah Safian ’17.

The Panthers added to their lead only six minutes later when Middlebury’s Adam Glaser chipped a ball over Safian for his league-leading fifth goal of the season.

“They had three shots and two goals,” Andrew Jones ’16 said. “Still, they were two crucial mistakes and we made them.”

The team has been practicing stiffening up defensivley to limit mistakes under pressure and play a more complete game.

“We are working on fixing our mistakes in practice so they don’t happen again,” said senior captain Eric Goitia ’15. “So that’s a positive coming out of this.”

Bowdoin had numerous chances down the stretch and outshot Middlebury 9-3 for the game, but the Polar Bears could not capitalize on any of their chances. 

Dias-Costa ripped an open look over the net in the 77th minute, and the Panther defense was able to hold onto the lead for the rest of the game.

The Polar Bear offense was plagued with the same problems around the net they have suffered all season: scoring goals. 

“The other thing is composure and finishing around the net—we need to be more efficient with our chances,” said Jones.

“In our league, every team is known for being strong and tough on defense,” Goitia said. “So taking advantage of the opportunities you get is so important.”

The Polar Bears will have to bounce back from a disappointing 1-3 start in the NESCAC if they want to be one of the eight teams that reach the playoffs. They will have plenty of time to work on their play, with nine days off until their next game, which will be against Husson.

Both Goitia and Jones emphasized the importance of playing a more complete game, and said the team will have to make minor adjustments to its overall system.

“We need to continue to focus on getting everything right over 90 minutes—not 89 minutes—with that one minute being when they score,” said Jones.

“We just have to be more fluid going from defense to attack,” Goitia said. “In transition a lot of  times we can get caught and we need to focus on that.”

Both said that if the team makes these small changes it could be dangerous team.

“We feel confident that our ability is good enough to beat every team in our league,” Jones said. “If we continue to improve, we can beat the rest of the teams we play.” 

The women’s hockey team earned a crucial three points last weekend beating Trinity (10-6-4, 5-5-2 NESCAC) on Friday night and tying on Saturday in Watson Arena. The team improved its overall record to 9-8-3 (4-5-3 NESCAC). Sophomore Arianna Bourque led the way with two goals and three assists and was named NESCAC Player of the Week.

On Friday night, the Polar Bears took time to find their footing, allowing Trinity to jump to a 1-0 lead in the first period.

“We had a good week in practice, but we came out pretty flat,” said Head Coach Marissa O’Neil. “We kind of took a back seat to Trinity and watched them play a little bit.”

The men’s basketball team moved up one spot in the D-III rankings to No. 18 after a 2-1 week with wins over Thomas College and Trinity College, only losing to then-No. 3 Amherst. The wins improved Bowdoin’s record to 18-2 (5-2 NESCAC).

Last Friday, in a low-scoring affair, the Polar Bears defeated the Trinity College Bantams (11-9, 3-4 NESCAC) 46-39. Seven-footer John Swords ’15 led the way for Bowdoin with 11 points along with six rebounds and four blocks, while Andrew Madlinger ’14 scored nine points with seven rebounds and four assists. Stout defensive performance by both teams kept the scoring low—each team shot only 28 percent from the field.

“Our defense is ranked second [in points allowed] in D-III,” Madlinger said. “And although that game was extremely low scoring, we do tend to hold teams to low scores.”

Bowdoin senior linebacker Joey Cleary capped off a fantastic career this fall, earning titles of NESCAC Defensive Player of the Year—the first Polar Bear to do so since the conference was formed in 2000—and First Team All-NESCAC. Cleary was also named to the 2013 New England Football Writers Division II/III All-New England team.

Cleary led the league with 99 tackles, the highest number since 2009. He also amassed two fumble recoveries, two interceptions and 8.5 tackles for losses.

After three years as a starter, Cleary was named a captain this year, a position of responsibility initially foreign to him.

Last week, the Boston Red Sox won their eighth World Series Championship, beating the St. Louis Cardinals four games to two. Jared Porter ’03 works as the team’s Director of Professional Scouting and played an integral role with the rest of the front office in transforming the Red Sox from a last-place team in 2012 to World Series champions this year. The Orient caught up with him for a Q&A about the organization’s wild ride over the past year.

How does it feel to win the World Series for someone in the front office?It’s great. There was a lot of hard work by a lot of people—our players and coaching staff. I’m really happy for those guys and the city of Boston. As a front office member it’s a lot of fun, a lot of hard work, and a lot of stressful nights watching our team, but its pretty gratifying. It makes you hungry to get back to work and get back here.

Last season, the team traded away Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford and Josh Beckett in hopes of changing the clubhouse chemistry. How did that affect your offseason strategy, and what types of players were you looking to pick up in the offseason?Obviously we traded away some really good players, and we feel like we got some good prospects in return. But, it did free up significant money, so we were able to target players we really wanted and believed in. Right off the bat, Jonny Gomes, David Ross, Shane Victorino, Ryan Dempster, Koji Uehara and Mike Napoli were guys we really targeted and believed in. We were able to get the guys we really wanted to be here in Boston, and the financial flexibility allowed us to be aggressive pursuing them. Additionally, the financial flexibility allowed us to add our starting shortstop Stephen Drew later in the offseason and gave us the ability to add players to our roster in-season like Jake Peavy and Matt Thornton, too.  It definitely put us in a position of strength from a roster creativity perspective.