Softball Excels Despite Inexperienced Roster

Coming into the final weekend against Dartmouth, the Harvard sofball team had to take three of four to emerge the title winner. The Big Green came out victorious, splitting Saturday’s doubleheader and sweeping Sunday’s. With that, Harvard’s three-year North Division title streak came to an end.

For the first time since 2009, the Crimson did not win its division title and did not make it to the Ivy League Softball Championship Series.

Though one streak was broken this season, another—likely to be forgotten in the grand scheme of things—was made.

Through 11 straight games in the middle of April, the Crimson was undefeated. No team in the Ivy League—including Division Champions Dartmouth and Penn—pulled off such a feat.

An unlikely achievement by an unlikely group, the 11-game win streak highlights the story of Harvard’s season and the payoff of a season’s work by a team in transition.

After a 10-7 loss to Cornell in the first game of a doubleheader on Apr. 6, the Crimson came back with an 11-2 victory and would not lose again until Apr. 27. Before the second game against the Big Red, Harvard held a 10-17 record on the season and had lost three of its last four.

Coming into the 2013 season, the Crimson faced a lot of question marks, both at the plate and in the circle.

Harvard was forced to adjust to the loss of its two main pitchers, Rachel Brown and Laura Ricciardone, and instead rely on a trio of young, inexperienced players to fill the void. Last season, Brown sported a league-leading 1.40 ERA in 200 innings pitched, while Ricciardone finished third among qualified pitchers with a 1.72 ERA. The duo combined for a 35-13 record and pitched 314 of the Crimson’s 339.1 innings.

In addition to Brown and Ricciardone, the Crimson took the field without 2012’s team-leading hitter, Jane Alexander. Alexander hit .381 in 50 games and topped the Ivy League with 61 hits.

Starting in March, the Harvard softball team took on the tall task of replacing what it lost. The Crimson relied on a young trio of pitchers made up of freshmen Morgan Groom and Jamie Halula and sophomore Gabriele Ruiz. Veterans Shelbi Olson, Kasey Lange, and Stephanie Regan stepped up as leaders at the plate.

By the time it entered Ivy League play at the end of March, Harvard had racked up a 7-12 non-conference record. The Crimson had lost a number of close games and was frustrated by an inability to string hits together and shut down small mistakes.

But with the talented, albeit inexperienced rotation, and deep lineup, the pieces inevitably began to fall into place.

In April, the team finally reached its potential. Over 11 games, Harvard outscored its opponents, 74-38, and tallied 31 extra-base hits in a balanced offensive effort that started with unshakable pitching.

The Crimson finished Ivy League play as the second hottest-hitting team in the conference with a .312 combined batting average and a .382 on base percentage. Without dominant power hitting, Harvard relied on its speed on the base paths, stealing a league-high 42 bases.

Led by the dominant performances of Lange—who topped the league in RBI and placed second in slugging percentage and home runs—and Olson, Harvard tore through its Ivy League opponents one by one, including a four-game sweep of Yale. The Crimson also picked up three wins against Brown and non-conference victories over Quinnipiac and Boston University.

Eventually it had to end. In the fourth game of a four-game series against Brown, Harvard went up, 3-0, in the second and held a two- or three-run lead until the final inning. But when Brown loaded the bases with one out in the bottom of the seventh, the Crimson could not contain the damage, and two walks and a wild pitch brought the game—and the win streak—to a close.

Though the streak came to an end, the success of the young team is only just beginning. Of the three seniors who will graduate, only Stephanie Regan is in the starting lineup on a regular basis. Regan plays in the outfield occasionally but is usually the designated hitter, so the Crimson’s defensive lineup will remain intact.

With a full collegiate season under their belts, Groom, Halula and Ruiz are only poised to improve, and with a consistent lineup, Harvard will likely be better equipped to clean up pitching errors with defense and improved situational hitting.

For 16 days in the middle of April, the Harvard softball team showed what it was capable of, a performance that previews bigger things to come.

—Staff writer Hope Schwartz can be reached hschwartz@college.harvard.edu. Follow her on Twitter @HopeSchwartz16