With one weekend left in the softball team’s regular season, the North Division race is heating up for a spot in the Ivy Championship Series.
Harvard University and Dartmouth have been on a collision course all season for a winner-take-all series this weekend for the Division crown. Meanwhile, the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University are battling for the South Division title, with Penn the likely favorite to take on the winner of the Harvard-Dartmouth matchup for an Ivy League title.
“We’ve been winning all season, so there’s no reason to change anything now,” pitcher Morgan McCalmon ’16 said. The team will play to its strengths, power hitting and power pitching, she said, as well as focus on staying calm.
Between the two teams, Harvard and Dartmouth own a combined 28-1 conference record, the sole loss from a Brown University upset of Dartmouth in the final game of last weekend’s series in Providence, R.I.
Harvard was supposed to have closed its season against Dartmouth, but chronic bad weather throughout the spring has repeatedly canceled, postponed or suspended the Crimson’s games. Harvard still has two games remaining against Cornell University as well as a game against Penn that was suspended in early April at the end of the sixth inning with the score tied 8-8.
Harvard has been successful bouncing back from such game cancellations, defeating Princeton twice after its two-game series was postponed for half a month.
Dartmouth will have little margin for error against the Crimson and can only afford to lose one game out of a possible four, assuming Harvard clears its remaining Ivy League games. If the Big Green loses more than one, Dartmouth’s championship hopes rest on Cornell and Penn upsetting Harvard.
To win, Dartmouth’s pitching aces Kristen Rumley ’15 and McCalmon will need to maintain their current level of play in the circle.
“I think for us it’s just going in with the confidence we’ve had all season,” head coach Rachel Hanson said. “Our pitchers are the best 1-2 combo in the league, and I’ve full faith that they’ll pitch very well. And I trust we’ll get timely hits as well when we need to.”
Rumley holds a 15-6 record, and has pitched 12 complete games, while McCalmon owns a solid 8-4 record. Both have been recognized for their outstanding play by being named Ivy League player of the week multiple times each. Rumley also leads the league with 166 strikeouts, a shocking 61 ahead of the second place hurler.
“There’s always a little bit of nerves, but they’re not really bad,” McCalmon said. “I think it’s more excitement than anything. [Rumley] and I have been working hard all season to get to this moment. I’m really excited to get out there and show everybody what Dartmouth softball is and what we’ve been doing all season.”
Rumley and McCalmon’s Harvard counterparts can be just as deadly from the mound. Junior Laura Ricciardone has gone 17-5 with 11 complete games, leading the league with 17 victories, and freshman Taylor Cabe is 7-6 with six complete games. Combined, Cabe and Ricciardone have allowed just seven home runs on the season.
As a result, another key factor for Dartmouth to win is the consistency of its lineup — which had been on a roll, scoring early and often, until being shut down by Brown in the second half of last Sunday’s double-header and by the University of Massachusetts at Lowell on Tuesday in a 1-0 affair.
Karen Chaw ’17 and Katie McEachern ’16 tie for the team’s leading home run hitting with six each, tying them for second in the Ivy League, followed by McCalmon with five. The team leads the League in runs scored, hits and batting average in the League.
Harvard has one heavy hitter, senior Kasey Lange, who has six homers on the year and is tied for second in the league in batting average and RBI. Additionally, senior Shelbi Olson, while not a home run hitter, leads Harvard in hits with 48.
Last year, the Big Green won the North Division by three games over Harvard with a 15-3 regular season record.The Big Green clinched the Division during its final series against Harvard and ended up taking three out of four from the Crimson despite dropping the first game.
The final weekend series between travel partners also provides the lone opportunity for a home-and-home series of back to back doubleheaders. The Big Green will head down to Cambridge for a pair of games Saturday afternoon before returning to Hanover to take on the Crimson in the final twin bill of the regular season on Sunday.
“We have shown this all season that we are a championship caliber team,” catcherAlex St. Romain ’14 said. “We just have to go in with that mindset of believing in ourselves, having fun the way we usually do, and that will lead to our success for sure.”
