Northwestern coach Kelly Bleam admits that her girls had a difficult week, but she wasn’t ready to accept any excuses. When her team came out flat against Bangor, she used halftime to let her players know that she wasn’t at all happy with how they played in the first 40 minutes. That not-so-gentle encouragement woke the team up enough to turn a scoreless game into a 6-0 win over the Slaters in Colonial League play.

“I kind of yelled at them,” said Bleam sheepishly after the win. “We’ve had a very tiring week but that’s no excuse to come out today and play flat and Bangor, their midfield especially, is just entirely too good for us to not play hard against them and have success. It was nothing more than telling them to get their minds where they’re supposed to be and put some effort in.”

The turnaround started when Sara Hathaway bounced a shot off the crossbar just six minutes into the second half. Jenna Lowthert was positioned perfectly to play the rebound and put the ball into the back of the net. Four minutes later, Maggie Motolese scored the first of her two goals and just under two minutes after that, it was Bailey Groff who made it 3-0 in favor of the Lady Tigers.

Later in the half, Motolese’s second goal and goals from Olivia Motolese and Kayla Bardonner all came within a seven-minute span of each other to finish off the scoring.

The win was a nice rebound from a tough 3-2 loss to Saucon Valley (5-0 Colonial, 6-1 overall) two days earlier. In that game, the Tigers gave up the winning goal with just six minutes left in regulation. Just a day earlier, Northwestern (3-1, 3-1) traveled to play Blue Mountain, one of the tougher teams in the Schuylkill League, and took home a 3-1 win.

Bleam didn’t blame the disappointing loss to Saucon Valley for the early lack of performance against Bangor, pointing instead to the tough schedule that her team had to endure.

“They’re [Blue Mountain] just outstanding and we were exhausted from that and then turned around the next day and played Saucon, and then we had yesterday to recover,” Bleam said. “It’s very early in the season and they’re not fit to play back-to-back games and I don’t know that soccer players ever should play back-to-back days on that level and on wet grass, but they did. That was part of it and they needed to realize that we need to play, that’s just the way it goes.”

The Lady Tigers were able to get some rest and haven’t played since last Friday. Tuesday’s game at Southern Lehigh was postponed to Oct. 2. The postponement breaks up a string of three straight games this week, but gives the team three straight games in two weeks when they host Notre Dame of Green Pond (0-3, 0-4) and then have the makeup game at Southern Lehigh (5-0, 5-0) before playing Northern Lehigh (0-7, 0-8) at home on Oct. 3.

This week’s schedule features Liberty (3-3, 4-3) and Moravian Academy (4-1-1, 6-1-1) at home before games at Palmerton (1-2, 2-3) and at home against Pen Argyl (0-2-1, 1-3-1) next week.