SOFTBALL '07: Team Likes New Ivy Setup

When looking at the Ivy League, the terms “format” and “change” do not usually go hand-in-hand, unless they are accompanying the phrase “lack of.”

In football, for example, the Ivy League champion does not complete in the Division I Football Championship Subdivision playoffs, while in basketball, the Ancient Eight is the only league without a conference tournament.

Yet in another sport, the league has shaken that image.

This season, softball is revamping its structure, creating two divisions of four teams each in the league from what had previously been one big division. The new system is the same as the league’s setup for baseball and will result in more league games and, most likely, tighter races down the stretch.

“We need more of a conference race,” Harvard coach Jenny Allard says. “The conference champion was always decided by the third week in April. In baseball it was decided during the last weekend of games.”

The new division structures are the same as baseball’s, putting the Crimson in a division with Yale, Brown, and Dartmouth. Defending champion Princeton, last year’s runner-up Cornell, Columbia, and Penn make up the other division. At the end of the season, the winners of each division will meet in a best-of-three series to determine the league champion and winner of its NCAA berth.

Two years ago, the coaches petitioned the league to change its format so there would be a conference tournament at the end of the season to determine the league winner, similar to what many other conferences in the country use.

The league rejected their proposal then, but the coaches went back to the bargaining table last year and convinced the league brass to adapt the same format as baseball.

Harvard played 14 league games last season, the same as every other Ivy team, compared to 30 non-conference games. And it didn’t start its league season until April 9.

This year, each team will play 20 games against its fellow Ivy schools, starting with a doubleheader March 31 at home against Penn. The schedule is highlighted by back-to-back doubleheaders against each team in its division. The teams will also play one doubleheader against every team in the other division.

“The new setup gives us the opportunity to play more games and, bottom line, that’s better,” junior pitcher Amanda Watkins says. “It also gives the season a real sense of competition because the [league title] can be determined by many different factors, not just one game, which it has been like in the past.”

For example, the Crimson was swept in its first two league games last season at Cornell. That gave Harvard the same amount of losses after one weekend as eventual league champion Princeton would end up with, meaning the Crimson had to win the rest of its league games to finish with the same record as the league champions.

“With the previous system, teams could effectively be out of the running for the title if they came out with a bad first weekend,” junior pitcher Shelly Madick says. “Splitting up into two divisions keeps more teams in the race, which will hopefully keep the games more competitive throughout the league for the entirety of the season.”

With four games against each team in the division, there is a chance the opposite could happen as well, if a team, such as the talented Harvard squad, can sweep its series against a division opponent.

“I think there’s no reason why we shouldn’t win our division and that we’re definitely looking at going towards the goal of winning Ivies,” captain Julia Kidder says. “I think it’s great that there’s more Ivy League games because it enables us to distance ourselves from the competitors even more.”

—Staff writer Ted Kirby can be reached at tjkirby@fas.harvard.edu.