Softball Splits With St. John's

It was a rough day for St. John's when the Crimson came to town this weekend.

After the second-seeded St.John's basketball team was upset by tenth-seeded Gonzaga in the second round of the NCAA tournament, the Harvard women's softball team added to the pain of the St. John's faithful, holding the Red Storm offense to two runs in two games.

Despite Harvard's spectacular pitching performance, the Crimson (2-6) could only manage to split the weekend series with St. John's (9-12), roaring back to take the second game of the doubleheader, 4-0, after dropping the opener, 2-1.

The Crimson pitching was perfect in the second game as sophomore Suzanne Guy improved to 2-2 on the season with a complete shutout.

Guy came out firing strikes, striking-out four without allowing a walk in seven-innings of work.

Helping out her own cause, Guy drove in a pair of runs with a sacrifice fly and an RBI single up the middle.

After three scoreless innings, Harvard got all the offense it would need in the fourth as a pair of Crimson runs came across the plate.

Harvard would add insurance runs in the fifth and sixth innings as the Crimson rolled to an easy 4-0 victory.

Senior Deborah Abeles belted a homerun to add to her Harvard career record, and fellow senior Ghia Godfree doubled in the other Crimson run.

Abeles set a Harvard record with 17 career homeruns last year while leading the Ivy League with a .411 batting average and earning First Team All-Ivy honors.

Sophomore star Sarah Koppel, a First Team All-Ivy selection her rookie year, continued to impress, going 2-for-2 with a double and a single.

Fellow sophomore Cherry Fu added a single and a pair of runs to round out the scoring in the Crimson's six-hit rout.

In the early game, dominant pitching was again the story as Harvard junior Chelsea Thoke and St. John's Gina Calabrese combined for 24 strikeouts in a classic softball duel from the mound.

A pair of early runs by the Red Storm, however, would come back to haunt Harvard as St. John's picked up a nail-biting 2-1 victory.

Down 2-0 in the seventh and final inning, the Crimson mounted a late comeback as junior Mairead McKendry drilled a solo homer to pull Harvard to within one.

It would be too little too late, however, for the Crimson as the Red Storm's early two-run lead held up for the win.

St. John's pushed across a run in the first and then added to its lead with a second run in the third.

That would be all for the Red Storm, however, as Thoke silenced the St. John's bats for the remainder of the game.

Thoke, the 1999 Ivy League Player of the Year, racked up 12 strikeouts in just six innings of work while allowing just one earned run and a single walk.

Fu picked up a double while senior Jessie Amberg and Abeles each added singles in Harvard's four-hit performance.

The Crimson's next contests are this weekend at the Buzz Classic at Georgia Tech.