Ivy League Championship At Stake This Weekend

Graduation is a time for most seniors to reflect on how much things have changed since their freshman year.

But the seniors on the Harvard softball team (25-20, 17-3 Ivy) are hoping that their careers in crimson will wrap up just as they began: with an Ivy League title.

“We won our freshman year,” co-captain Margaux Black said. “Ever since then, we’ve wanted to get another one.”

Harvard’s veterans will get a chance to bring things full circle this afternoon when they take on Cornell in this year’s Ivy League Championship Series.

The doubleheader will begin today at 12:30. Should the teams split, as they did the last time they faced each other, a final game will take place on Saturday, starting at the same time.

The Crimson headed to Ithaca yesterday in preparation for the big matchup. The team will face a Big Red team (35-12, 17-3) so much its equal that one tiebreaker wasn’t enough to determine hosting rights for this series.

Harvard and Cornell finished the season with identical league records and even head-to-head results, so hosting was determined based on which team had the best record against the third-place team, Penn.

Both the Crimson and the Big Red dropped only one game to the Quakers. Because Penn is in Cornell’s South Division and not Harvard’s North, the Big Red played it four times while the Crimson and the Quakers met only twice, giving Cornell the higher winning percentage and therefore the hosting rights.

“I think it’ll be a tough battle,” Harvard coach Jenny Allard said. “It’ll be a great serie. I think both teams have strong pitching, solid defense, and good hitting. They’re very evenly matched.”

The last time the teams faced, two of the Crimson’s top pitchers, rookie Jess Ferri and sophomore Rachel Brown, struggled against a potent Cornell offense, before Black took the mound and led Harvard to a 7-6 nightcap win.

“They’re free swingers,” Black said of the Big Red’s hitters. “They come up and hack at it. It’s really fun to pitch against them because they come out swinging. It’s different from other Ivies.”

Black, Brown, Ferri, and the rest of the Crimson’s pitchers have only gained momentum since splitting against Cornell.

The team swept Columbia a day after splitting with Penn and went on to take three of four from Brown. Then Harvard swept its past two weekends, when it faced Yale and Dartmouth.

Not only have the Crimson pitchers honed their games, but the hitters have also found their swing recently. After a series of low-scoring games, the team has put up no fewer than five runs in each of its past eight league games, highlighted by a 10-3 win over Yale on April 24 and a 9-0 win over Dartmouth last Saturday.

Junior Ellen Macadam and sophomore Whitney Shaw have led the charge. Macadam has the team’s highest batting average at .365, with Shaw right behind her at .338. Shaw’s .714 slugging percentage, meanwhile, takes the cake, with Macadam’s .554 good for second on the team.

“The hitters have been doing a fantastic job,” Brown said. “It makes it a lot easier. From a pitcher’s perspective, I feel a lot more confident knowing I don’t have to be perfect.”

Not that Brown has been that far off. The sophomore has thrown 226 strikeouts and boasts a 1.25 ERA.

And she doesn’t look to be slowing down.

“We conditioned a lot in the fall,” Brown said. “We’re not tired at the end of the season. Last year, I know I got tired. We’re still going strong.”

At full strength, the sophomore could be trouble for the Big Red batters, especially given the added motivation of redeeming a rare weekend of struggles.

“She’ll definitely be able to hold the Cornell hitters,” Black said.

The Big Red will also hit Niemand-Robison field with a fair amount of momentum, though it hasn’t had the same late season dominance as Harvard.

A 4-2 loss to Princeton on Sunday ended the Crimson’s six-game conference win streak, though the team picked up plenty of steam the previous weekend with a sweep of Columbia, including a five-inning 18-5 win.

In its toughest game of the weekend, Harvard was still able to come away with a close 6-5 victory in extra innings.

“We gained a lot of confidence,” Black said. “The last game was a battle and we came out on top. It was just a really fun exciting game, a great game to end our regular season on.”

The ILCS, then, might be coming at just the right time.

“I think momentum’s on our side,” Allard said.

The boost couldn’t come at a better time for the seniors on the team: co-captain Melissa Schellberg—a Crimson sports editor—Black, Jennifer Francis, Stephanie Krysiak—a Crimson sports editor—Jessica Pledger, and Dana Roberts.

After capturing the title their freshman year, the squad fell off the mark the following season before taking the North Division last year.

Taking two games from the Big Red would complete the seniors’ climb back the top of the Ivy League, where they began their careers three years ago.

“All the underclassmen have the sense that this is our year to win it for the seniors,” Brown said.

“They’ve been a tremendous class,” Allard said.

—Staff writer Christina C. McClintock can be reached at ccmcclin@fas.harvard.edu.