Offense scores at will

To understand why the Penn field hockey team put on such an impressive offensive display in Saturday's 3-0 win over Brown, all you have to do is ask senior forward co-captain Franny Maguire: "Our coach finally gave us permission to score more than one goal so we decided to take advantage of that." Seriously, though, the Quakers scored in just about every way possible and put some real offense on the board for the first time since an early-season 4-0 win over Delaware. "When we have control we want to be able to pass easily, not just ram it down the right side or ram it down the left side of the field and that's what we did today," Maguire said. "We weren't in any rush to go through the defense. We just wanted to work it around them and we did." They scored off open field play. They scored on a penalty corner. And they scored on a penalty flick. Overall, it was the most diverse scoring effort for the Quakers this season. Junior midfielder Amy Pine was the main beneficiary of this diversified scoring, putting Penn on the board early with a goal on a penalty corner and finishing off the Bears with a penalty stroke. That gives her nine goals on the year, three of them in Ivy play. Maguire scored, too, on a beautiful breakaway. But it was the penalty corner that opened the scoring. Pine fired a straight shot past Brown goalie Tara Harrington into the right corner of the cage. It was the first straight shot the Quakers have scored on in a long time. "They didn't play with a post player," Pine said. "Usually, on some corners, they have a post player covering the right post. They didn't have a post so I aimed to that corner. There was nobody there, and it's hard for the goalie to cover the entire cage when I'm off to that side. It just all depends on where you set up." Penn assistant coach Val Cloud said that it wasn't a planned play. "Amy or [sophomore back] Sue [Quinn] aim where they see the greatest space," Cloud said. "That shot might have scored even if there was a post player because it had some bounce on it. It's something we knew ahead of time and that's probably what Amy was thinking. I didn't say to her 'aim for the right corner.' " The Quakers were not able to score on another corner, but they didn't mind because it was the first game in a long time Penn was able to score on one. The Quakers earned the flick after Harrington tackled junior forward Amy Shapiro right in front of the cage. Both Pine and Harrington guessed right, but Harrington dove low and Pine flicked it into the upper corner of the cage. Penn's other goal was earned the old-fashioned way. Maguire picked up a loose ball at midfield, deftly slid it behind the last Bear defender and pounded it into the left side of the cage. Cloud attributed the goal to a Brown defensive idiosyncrasy. "We did move the ball well and we got the opportunities," Cloud said. "Today we capitalized on a couple and I think we capitalized on their flat defense, too, laying some nice through balls in there. They got in behind their defense. That's why Franny scored and she had a couple other opportunities like that. There wasn't any depth, there wasn't any cover, so if the ball got through there wasn't anybody backing up." Overall, Penn's passing created a number of opportunities that it hasn't had in a while. "We didn't really do anything different," Maguire said. "We were just really intense. We knew how important this game was and we just wanted to take advantage of every opportunity because we didn't know how many we'd get."