Dartmouth (9-16, 2-2 Ivy) captured a 4-3 win in its second game against Cornell (17-16, 3-1 Ivy), halting a losing streak that had stretched to five games after falling to the Big Red 3-2 in extra innings earlier in the day.
The Big Green ground out another split against the Columbia Lions (18-15-1, 1-1 Ivy), losing the first game 3-1 and winning the second 5-2.
Saturday and Sunday's games were not only eagerly anticipated as the commencement of Ivy competition, but were also a watershed in the team's season. Traveling to Cornell with four straight losses on their minds, the women in green definitely saw the weekend as an opportunity to rebound from their recent slide.
"Every game is important," Alicia Petryk '06 said. "However, the teams you face in conference are the ones you face every year, so there is a higher level of rivalry and history."
Dartmouth depended on defense and the stellar pitching of Stephanie Trudeau '09 to break out of its slump. Trudeau, who earned her fourth win of the season, gave up only three runs, all in the third inning.
She then displayed poise beyond her years, buckled down and let only three Big Red runners on base in the final four innings. Most importantly, Trudeau kept Dartmouth in the lead and allowed the team to snap its losing streak with a 4-3 victory.
The win against Cornell improved the spirits of the entire team, not only ending the losing streak, but also getting that very important first conference win of the season.
"Cornell has always been a tough team for us to face. This was our senior class' first time beating them," Trudeau said. "I think that if we can beat them, then we can beat anyone in our league."
Trudeau had another solid pitching performance against Columbia. After starting slowly and giving up a pair of runs in the first, she struck out nine batters and only ceded three hits the rest of the way. She received some insurance from Petryk in the fifth, who added her second home run of the weekend to bring the score to 5-2.
Trudeau's success over the weekend further highlights the important role that the freshmen are playing on the team this season. With only more Ivy League games ahead of them in the future, they now face the most intense part of the season.
"I think that all the freshmen were a little nervous, but really excited for our first league game. I think we handled ourselves really well," Katie Chifcian '09 said. "We have been anticipating this all year and now we can finally just go out and play."
Unfortunately, the squad had trouble pulling things together over the weekend.
Angela Megaw '08 started the first game of both doubleheaders for the Big Green. Megaw was hit with her eighth and ninth losses of the season over the weekend, despite giving up only five earned runs and nearly pulling out a pair of victories.
"With our offense, it's a matter of putting teams away earlier. We need to put our hits together and execute to push runs across," Megaw added. "I am very confident that our lineup will score a lot more runs. If we keep the intensity up, we'll do really well."
Megaw very nearly ended the losing streak a game early. She held Cornell scoreless until the bottom of the eighth when the Big Red rallied to tie the score at two -- one run coming off of an error -- and sent the game into extra innings.
In the eighth, a play at the plate allowed Dartmouth to narrowly escape unscathed. Cornell's Caitlin Warren challenged Dartmouth's defense and attempted to score from second on a hit up the middle. Although she avoided the tag at home plate, Dartmouth appealed to the umpire and it was deemed that Warren did not touch the plate.
Cornell finally came through in the ninth when, with runners on first and third and two outs, Jenna Campagnolo hit Megaw's pitch deep to the outfield where it short-hopped the fence and scored the winning run.
Against Columbia the next day, Megaw returned to the mound and once again pitched solidly in a losing effort. Though able to keep the Lions scoreless through five innings, Megaw finally allowed three runs in the bottom of the sixth. Columbia's Jackie Adelfio, who earned an impressive 13th win of the season, came in and closed out the game to give Columbia the victory.
Dartmouth will travel to Yale on Saturday for the first of five straight doubleheaders against Ivy League opponents in a span of eight days. The games will be a test of both skill and endurance, but the recent wins against Cornell and Columbia have the Big Green women believing in themselves.
"This weekend was really encouraging for the team," Chifcian added. "Winning those games and our overall play restored some confidence that we had been missing for a while. If we continue to play to our potential, the team will do very well in Ivies."
