A GRAND FINALE

A doubleheader full of ups and downs for the Harvard softball team ended with the most resounding kind of up—the walk-off grand slam.

In both ends of Saturday’s twin-bill against Princeton, the Crimson shook off the sting of crooked, late-inning deficits and staged defiant, last-chance rallies to pull close. After the first game’s rally fell short in a controversial 4-3 defeat, the pressure was on with a 4-2 seventh-inning hole in the second game. But Harvard showed no signs of anxiety in stringing together four straight hits to cut the deficit in half and load the bases.

A hundred-strong crowd—fixated on junior Tiffany Whitton as she stepped to the plate with two outs—went out of control as the Harvard tri-captain crushed the game’s final pitch over the right-field wall for a 7-4 victory.

Harvard Coach Jenny Allard, who vigorously instructed her players through every at-bat of the game-winning rally, coached to the last possible moment, excitedly waving home each of the runners from the third base box as Whitton’s ball left the park.

For the 2002 Crimson—a team that has outscored its opponents 28-6 in the seventh inning this season—the comebacks were nothing extraordinary.

“That is what has characterized this team—they just have tremendous heart,” Allard said immediately following the game. “They play as a team. They believe in themselves no matter what the score, no matter what the situation.”

Had the Crimson been swept by Princeton, it would have been buried in a nearly insurmountable two-game hole. But with the split, both Princeton and Harvard maintain control of their own destiny in the Ivy race. The Tigers (23-15, 9-1 Ivy) and Crimson (21-7, 7-1) each swept doubleheaders yesterday against Dartmouth (17-11, 4-4) and Penn (11-26, 0-10), respectively.

Princeton rounds out its Ivy schedule with home doubleheaders against Brown (7-18, 2-6) and Yale (17-5-1, 4-4). Harvard is on the road for the rest of its Ivy season with doubleheaders at Columbia (19-13, 4-4), Dartmouth, and defending Ivy co-champion Cornell (19-15, 4-4).

Harvard 7, Princeton 4

The grand slam was sweet redemption for Whitton, who gave up three runs as a pitcher in the sixth to blow a 2-1 lead that sophomore Kara Brotemarkle had maintained for five innings. She was grateful to her teammates, four of whom had to reach base for her to have another shot at the plate.

“I really felt like I owed it to the team,” Whitton said. “We worked so hard today and my pitching performance wasn’t really there. I can’t thank the team enough for rallying. Mine was the last hit, but everybody else deserves way more credit than I do, because they’re the ones who started it, not me.”

In both of the Harvard seventh-inning rallies, sophomore third baseman Breanne Cooley reached base first. There was no one better to have at the plate with a two or three-run last inning deficit than Cooley, who time and again stayed composed in the face of recent failure.

Since Princeton’s Melissa Finley had given up just one baserunner since the third, a Crimson comeback seemed distant when Cooley stepped to the plate with one out. But her timely hit made the comeback possible.

“I went up there just thinking to start a rally and my teammates pulled through,” Cooley said. “I mean I start a rally, I need someone else to pick me up, and that’s what they did. It was an unbelievable win.”

Next up, freshman Beth Sabin—who pitched a shutout seventh to keep the game close—came through with an opposite-field single. Sophomore shortstop Rachel Goldberg followed up with a single to right to load the bases for the top of the order.

Freshman Lauren Stefanchik, the nation’s 29th-leading hitter with a .422 average entering the week, had just three RBI to her credit this season, but that only masked her strength at the plate with the bases loaded. Stefanchik knocked Finley out of the game by slapping the first pitch over the right side of the infield to cut the deficit to 4-3 and reload the bases.

Princeton turned to a fresh arm in Wendy Bingham to close out the game, while Harvard matched with freshman Cecily Gordon. Bingham nearly escaped by forcing Gordon into a 1-2-3 double play, but Gordon beat the catcher’s throw to first, keeping the inning alive for Whitton.

Whitton’s credited her walk-off home run, her second in three home doubleheaders this season, to nothing more than divine intervention, having prayed to the softball gods the night before.

“It all came together,” Whitton said. “I think the softball gods were there for me today.”

If there were softball gods affecting the outcome of Saturday’s game, they were certainly challenging Whitton’s mettle up until the final pitch. Princeton’s Brie Galicinao, the 2001 Ivy Pitcher and Player of the Year, had Whitton’s number on the mound and at the plate. In the first game where Galicinao went the distance, Whitton went 0-for-3 and only reached base when she was beaned in the seventh. In the second game, Galicinao homered off Whitton to tie the game at two.

Kristin Lueke, the next batter, tripled to right field and Kristin Del Calvo walked, putting Whitton in a first-and-third, one-out jam with Princeton clean-up hitter Kim Veenstra at the plate. Lueke scored on a wild pitch and freshman catcher Laura Miller threw the ball away on the play, allowing Del Calvo’s pinch runner to advance all the way to third. She scored on a deep Veenstra sacrifice fly.

“I gave what I had, but my pitches weren’t breaking, and they’re a good-hitting team, so they hit the ball hard,” Whitton said. “I just need to go in more focused and hit my spots.”

Trailing 4-2 in the seventh, Whitton walked the first batter and was yanked by Allard. Sabin came in relief, struck out the next two batters, then got the third to fly out to retire the side.

Whitton has given up nine runs, six earned through 5.1 innings pitched in her last three appearances. She hasn’t been pitching at 100 percent due to a rotator cuff injury, leaving the team with less pitching depth than it hoped for.

With senior Suzanne Guy lasting just four innings in the first game, Harvard needed eight quality innings from Brotemarkle in the doubleheader to have any chance at a victory. Brotemarkle came through by two-hitting Princeton with no walks and six strikeouts through five innings. Her only blemish was a solo home run by Del Calvo in the fourth that cut a 2-0 Harvard lead in half.

The first Harvard lead came on Whitton’s two-run single in the third, set up by the freshmen Sabin and Stefanchik. Sabin led off the inning with a double and pinch runner Louisa Canham advanced to third on a Goldberg sacrifice. Stefanchik reached base easily on a grounder as the Princeton fielder had to look Canham back to third. Stefanchik stole second with ease, leaving the meat of the order with two runners in scoring position.

Princeton 4, Harvard 3

If the conclusion of the second game was the manifestation of the softball gods’ will, then the conclusion of the first game was the umpires blasphemously playing god themselves.

Rarely does a softball game end with the cleanup hitter doubled over after getting beaned with a fastball in the gut, but that’s what happened to tri-captain Sarah Koppel in the 4-3 defeat.

Harvard was on the verge of a seemingly impossible comeback against Galicinao. With Princeton up 4-1 in the seventh, the Ivy Pitcher of the Year who hadn’t given up an earned run in six starts was getting rattled as she surrendered a double to Cooley, a two-run pinch-hit homer to Sabin, a single to Stefanchik, and hit Whitton. That brought up Koppel with two outs, two on and a one-run deficit.

On a two-strike pitch, Galicinao drilled Koppel in the stomach with a two-strike pitch, seemingly her second hit batter in a row, which would have loaded the bases for sophomore second baseman Sara Williamson.

But soon after Koppel turned away from the mound in pain, the home-plate umpire yelled out, “Did she swing?” to the fellow umpires and received an affirmative sign. The stunned crowd took a good minute to realize that the game was over and then harshly voiced its displeasure.

Koppel was turning in to avoid Galicinao’s inside pitch, but from the umpire’s point of view, Koppel’s hands were moving towards the ball, which meant strike three instead of a hit-by-pitch.

Allard discussed the play at length with the officials. After the doubleheader, she did not refrain from calling it one of the worst calls she had ever seen.

“You never make a call like that to end a game,” Allard said. “You just don’t. There was nothing we could do about it, but it was a very wrong call.”

Harvard trailed 4-0 entering the bottom of the fifth and a comeback seemed like a long shot, given that the Crimson had managed just two hits from Williamson and one from tri-captain Lisa Watanabe in the first four innings, and none of the Crimson leadoff hitters had reached.

But Cooley broke that string by opening the fifth inning with a double that wound up at the base of the left-field fence. She advanced to third on a Goldberg sacrifice and scored on a failed pick-off attempt. Stefanchik followed up with a two-out triple, but Gordon couldn’t drive her home, leaving the score at 4-1.

Four runs proved to be too much of a deficit to surmount against Galicinao. The game was guaranteed to be a pitcher’s duel, and it was just that for the game’s first three innings as Guy and Galicinao each put of zeros on the scoreboard.

Princeton, which had multiple baserunners in both the second and third, finally got on the scoreboard in the fourth when Becky Nemec hit a leadoff double off Guy and came home on an RBI single by Mackenzie Forsythe.

The key to Harvard keeping Princeton scoreless in the third was the third-base play of Cooley, who assisted on all three outs of the inning and allowed Guy to get out of a two-on, no-out jam. The last out, a back-handed grab, saved at least two runs.

“I was struggling a little bit position-wise, finding out where I needed to play,” Cooley said. “So I worked with coach a lot on Friday before the games, and I went in with the attitude that I needed to play confident. I just started playing up a little bit more to take away the bunt. I worked on it and it came through.”

Guy became undone in the fifth inning when she allowed the first three runners to reach on singles. The next batter grounded slowly to Goldberg at short, and Goldberg took a high-risk by throwing home. Her effort went wide of Miller at the plate, and the end result was two runs scored, and Princeton still had runners at second and third with no outs. Guy was taken out of the game thereafter.

“[The Princeton players] were just good hitters,” Allard said. “They swung their bats. Suzanne pitched great, but they’re just a good hitting team and they’re going to adjust to somebody.”

Brotemarkle entered the game and let one of her two inherited runners cross the plate, but she shut down the Tigers the rest of the way.

Harvard 7, Princeton 4

at Soldiers Field

Princeton (21-15, 7-1) 0 0 0 1 0 3 0 — 4 4 0

Harvard (19-7, 5-1) 0 0 2 0 0 0 5 — 7 9 1

LOB—P 2, H 3. 2B—H Sabin. 3B—P Lueke. HR—P Galicinao, Del Calvo. H Whitton. RBI—P Galicinao, Del Calvo, Veenstra. H Whitton 6, Stefanchik. Pitchers— P Finley L (6.1 IP, 8 H, 6 ER, 1 BB, 3 K), Bingham (0.1 IP, 1 H, 1 ER, 0 K). H Brotemarkle (5 IP, 2 H, 1 R, 0 B, 6 K). Whitton (1 IP, 2 H, 1 ER, 2 BB, 0 K). Sabin W 5-1 (1 IP, 0 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 2 K). A—125.

Princeton 4, Harvard 3

at Soldiers Field

Princeton (21-14, 7-0) 0 0 0 1 3 0 0 — 4 9 1

Harvard (18-7, 4-1) 0 0 0 0 1 0 2 — 3 8 3

LOB— P 8, H 7. 2B—P Nemec, H Williamson, Cooley. 3B—H Stefanchik. HR—H Sabin. RBI—P Volicsik, Forsythe. H Sabin 2. Pitchers—P Galicinao (7 IP, 8 H, 3 ER, 1 BB, 7 K). H Guy L 5-2 (4 IP, 8 H, 2 ER, 0 BB, 2 K), Brotemarkle (3 IP, 1 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 3 K). A—125