AOTW: Brotemarkle Goes the Distance

Softball co-captain Kara Brotemarkle did enough this weekend to warrant Athlete of the Month accolades.

After all, any pitching slouch can give up one run over a weekend, but it takes a bit more to limit your opponents to one run over 27 innings of work.

That’s right. In two games, Brotemarkle pitched 27 innings, only one inning short of the equivalent of four full games. For most players, hurling a two-hit, nine-strikeout shutout would in itself be a complete, solid weekend. But Brotemarkle managed to top that performance, although neither she nor anyone else would ever have thought it would be this way.

On Saturday afternoon, Brotemarkle took the mound in Harvard’s first of two games against two-time defending Ivy champions Princeton. She held the potent Tiger offense scoreless through seven innings, and with the score still knotted at zero, the teams headed into extra innings.

The Crimson offense repeatedly got runners on base, but could not seem to get the one extra hit to win the game. For 12 innings. That’s 12 more innings. In the top of the 12th, Brotemarkle surrendered a lead-off single, but then got the next Tiger batter, Kristin Lueke, to hit into a fielder’s choice. Lueke stole second, and Brotemarkle walked Wendy Bingham to put runners on first and second.

Then Princeton’s Stephanie Steel sent a shot into center field. It was the first RBI hit Brotemarkle had allowed in her last 29 innings pitched.

Steel wound up at second, Lueke ended up at third, and the Tigers had the first very elusive run of the game.

Due up for Princeton was Melissa Finley, last year’s Ivy Player of the Year, and Erin Snyder, a First-Team All-Ivy selection last season. Brotemarkle forced Finley into an infield pop-up, and then delivered a perfectly placed curveball to Snyder who predictably sent it to the right side of the infield and into the glove of second baseman Sara Williamson.

In the bottom of the frame, Harvard scored two runs, both with two outs, to seize the victory and cap one of the most memorable games in Harvard softball history.

Brotemarkle out-dueled two of the Ivy League’s premier pitchers in Snyder and Penn’s Lindsey Parmar.

For the weekend, Brotemarkle posted a microscopic earned run average of 0.26, allowing one run and striking out 18 in 27 intense innings.

Her dominant weekend pushed her record to 6-7 while lowering her season ERA to a tidy 1.37. In nearly 87 innings of work, she has allowed 72 hits and struck out 85. She has four shutouts to her credit, and opponents hit a paltry .224 against her.

—J. PATRICK COYNE