Whitton Earns Top Ivy Honor

Yesterday was a day of high honors for Harvard softball. As expected, the Crimson was named top seed and host of an All-Ivy field for the ECAC tournament this weekend. But unexpectedly, the Ivy awards were publicly announced late in the afternoon. Shortly after practice ended, junior tri-captain Tiffany Whitton discovered she had earned the league’s highest accolade, Player of the Year.

“The Ivy League has a lot of great players and a lot of great teams, so it’s a huge honor,” she said. “It’s really hard to single out one player who had a great season.”

The fact that Whitton (.426, 12 HR, 45 RBI in 36 games) led the league in batting average, home runs per game and RBI per game might have made her easier to single out.

In RBI per game, she not only tops the Ivies, she tops the nation. Whitton also ranks 12th nationally in batting average and fourth nationally in home runs per game. She also tied an NCAA record by hitting three home runs in a game and set a new standard for Harvard single-season and career home runs.

Statistics mean nothing without the clutch play to back them up, but Whitton didn’t disappoint in that category either. Most notable was her walk-off grand slam to beat eventual Ivy champion Princeton on April 13, keeping Harvard alive in the Ivy race at the time.

Though the team she captained placed a disappointing second in the Ivies, it won a higher percentage of its games than any Crimson softball team in school history.

Harvard has fielded the Ivy Player of the Year winner four of the last five years.

The only player to break that string was Princeton senior Brie Galicinao, who won both Ivy Player and Pitcher of the Year honors last year. Galicinao again won Pitcher of the Year honors yesterday after going 7-0 in Ivy play and leading Princeton to its first league title since 1996. But her offensive numbers didn’t come close to Whitton’s this season.

Lonely on the Top

While Whitton’s award was a great lift for the Harvard softball team, other circumstances surrounding the awards were less favorable.

For one, Whitton was not a unanimous selection to the First Team—highly unusual for any Ivy Player of the Year.

Also unusual—not one other Harvard bat that paced the nation’s 12th-highest scoring offense made the First Team.

Harvard did, however, have five players make the Second Team.

Among those who may have had the best case for First Team honors was freshman outfielder Lauren Stefanchik. As Harvard’s everyday leadoff hitter, she led the Ivies in stolen bases, finished third in the league with a .366 average and fourth in runs scored.

Stefanchik becomes the second Harvard rookie in as many years to place third in the league in hitting and not make the First Team. Breanne Cooley did the same last year and didn’t even get voted onto the Second Team.

This year, however, Cooley and Stefanchik both did make the Second Team.

Joining them are sophomore Kim Koral, who batted second for most of the season and, after a slow start, upped her average to near the .300 level; sophomore shortstop Rachel Goldberg, who was third on the team in both OBP and slugging; and sophomore pitcher Kara Brotemarkle, who led the team in ERA.

Both of Harvard’s All-Ivy Honorable Mention honorees—sophomore second baseman Sara Williamson and tri-captain Sarah Koppel—made the First Team last season.

Koppel had made the First Team every other year of her career, and was left off both the First and Second Team this year despite ranking fifth in the league in OBP and sixth in the league in slugging.

An All-Ivy Affair

As expected, the ECAC tournament features a four-team All-Ivy field, with Harvard seeded first, Cornell second, Dartmouth third and Columbia fourth.

Usually the tournament includes a more diverse field, but its unusually early date conflicted with several conference tournaments and made it nearly impossible for any schools but the Ivies to compete.

Nevertheless, the Crimson feels it has plenty to learn from the tournament.

“I think that it’ll be really good for us to go out and play some Ivy teams so we can get a taste of what next year will be like,” Whitton said. “It’s great that we’ll get some postseason play.”

The fact that Harvard has already finished above the other three teams in the Ivy standings won’t dampen the significance of winning the tournament.

“This definitely would mean something,” Whitton said. “We’ve never won a tournament.”

As with any team, Harvard wants a memorable ending for its seniors, especially Cherry Fu, who will play this weekend after being out for all but the tail end of the regular season.

“These are the last games for our seniors—that’s incentive enough for everyone to go play their hearts out,” Whitton said.

The double-elimination tournament will be played on Saturday and Sunday. Harvard’s first game is at 10 a.m. Saturday against Columbia. Game starting times run from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday and from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Sunday.