A 'Cupp'le Great Days

Piscataway, N.J.--No matter how one puts it, yesterday's losses for the Harvard softball team to Providence hurt.

The Crimson had gone so far in the 1995 campaign, especially considering that not many people (outside those affiliated with the squad) thought the team would do much of anything this season.

But a little engine named Tasha Cupp, among others, proved a lot of people wrong. Harvard definitely wouldn't have been where it was this year without this freshman pitcher, who displayed tremendous talent and courage. Her performances this weekend were nothing less than outstanding.

Think about it--she's only a freshman.

She hit her target--freshman catcher Kara Hartl's glove--as Steve Young would with any of his receivers, with tremendous accuracy, making it nearly impossible for the opposition to make solid contact. Cupp was put into one of the most pressure-packed situations imaginable, and she came through.

Yes, the team lost yesterday, but not because of Cupp.

Until the ninth inning of the second game, Cupp had hurled 24 innings, allowing four runs total and only one of them was earned. Cupp kept the Crimson in yesterday's finale, giving whatever was left in her tank until the Lady Friars finally came through in the second extra innings.

"Tasha Cupp is a tough kid," Harvard coach Jenny Allard said. "She is just very determined and is very focused."

With a 12-3 record heading into the ECAC Tournament, including nine consecutive wins, one would have to say that she was on a roll.

Cupp was even better than that at the ECACs. With a week off since last Saturday, Allard worked with Cupp on her mechanics. The process may have been annoying, but the results showed.

"She deserves a ton of credit for not only pitching well [this weekend] but for what she had done this week," Allard said. "It was very frustrating to work through, but she made the adjustments and pulled through, and I'm very proud of her."

In game one against top-seeded Providence on Saturday, Cupp one-hit the Lady Friars in a 4-0 shutout victory, striking out six batters. She then came on in relief of Heather Brown in Saturday's second game (against Rutgers) and pitched five-and-one-third innings of no-hit, shutout ball.

"I guess maybe that was because they had never seen me before," a far-too-modest Cupp said. "We worked really hard this week to hit my targets."

If Saturday's stellar outings weren't enough, Cupp returned to the mound yesterday and deserved another victory. The Lady Friars' first two runs scored with two outs after the Crimson committed two errors on plays that could have ended the fourth inning. The final two runs were also affected by Harvard miscues.

When Allard called upon her to relieve Brown in yesterday's final game, Cupp once again pitched brilliantly. She held the Lady Friars scoreless from the third through the eighth innings. If Harvard had only converted on one of its four chances with runners in scoring position in the seventh or eighth innings, Cupp would have gone out with the W and the championship.

But in the ninth inning the Providence bats came to life against a fatigued Cupp and that was that. Six runs in the ninth gave Providence the ECAC championship, but the freshman out of Antioch, Calif. goes out of the 1995 season a winner in anyone's book.

And Harvard and Cupp should be back for more of the same (and probably better) next year.

After all, she is only a freshman.