Harvard Earns Championship Date

After rallying to win the first game of the doubleheader, 3-2, against the Harvard softball team, second place Dartmouth looked primed to win the next game and force a winner-take-all scenario the next day as it twice grabbed three-run leads.

The first place Crimson had other ideas.

Freshman Melissa Schellberg hit a tie-breaking, two-out, three-run homer in the top of the sixth to lead Harvard (28-13, 13-6 Ivy) to a thrilling 11-8 win over the Big Green (16-23, 11-8 Ivy) in Hanover, NH. With the win, the Crimson clinched the Ivy League North Division and will play South Division winner Penn this weekend in the conference Championship Series.

HARVARD 11, DARTMOUTH 8

In a high-powered performance, the Big Green grabbed leads of 3-0 and 7-4 in the first two innings, but could not hold back the Harvard offense in the end.

“It was a gutsy, gutsy game,” Crimson coach Jenny Allard said. “We really stepped up.”

Harvard trailed 7-5 entering the top of the sixth before bringing home five runs in the frame. Freshman center fielder Stephanie Krysiak got it started with a triple down the left field line. Fellow freshman and designated hitter Lauren Murphy was then intentionally walked, the fifth of sixth times she would receive that treatment during the two games. Sophomore Bailey Vertovez pinch ran for her, and captain second baseman Julia Kidder was up next and scored Krysiak with a bunt base hit.

Senior shortstop Lauren Brown sacrificed the runners to second and third, where Vertovez would score from on junior first baseman Danielle Kerper’s ground out. Sophomore catcher Hayley Bock walked, bringing up Schellberg.

“Going up, I was really determined to do something,” Schellberg said. “The first two pitches were balls, so I knew I was going to a good pitch was coming. I just swung and got all of it.”

Her second home run of the year easily cleared the wall in left field, giving the Crimson the lead for good.

Freshman Dana Roberts set down Dartmouth in the final two innings as Harvard clinched the win. She came on in the first after junior Amanda Watkins had trouble getting out of the inning, in which the Big Green scored three runs. Roberts threw six and two-thirds innings of relief and improved to 6-5 on the season.

“Dana wasn’t as warm as we wanted her to be, but she really stepped up,” Allard said. “She got stronger as the game went on.”

Trailing 3-0, the Crimson retook the lead on one swing in the top of the second. Murphy, who entered the day holding the Ivy League single-season home run record with 17, had been walked intentionally in three of her four times plate appearances in the first game. So Allard moved her to the leadoff spot, with the idea that she would get on base for Kidder and Brown to drive in.

But when Murphy came up in the second, there was nowhere for Dartmouth to walk her, as the bases were loaded. So the Big Green pitched to her and the freshman sent the ball over the left-center field fence.

She was intentionally walked in her next three plate appearances.

DARTMOUTH 3, HARVARD 2

After being shut down by junior starter Shelly Madick for twelve straight innings, Dartmouth got something done off her, just as it looked like its postseason hopes would end.

Madick had pitched a shut out in Harvard’s 2-0 home win over the Big Green on Saturday and was blanking the team again through the first five innings while holding a 1-0 lead. But Dartmouth designated hitter Kelly Fry hit an RBI triple with one out to tie the score.

First baseman Alyssa Parker followed Fry with her team-leading sixth home run of the season, giving the Big Green a 3-1 lead.

“[Dartmouth] just started adapting to [Madick’s] pitches,” Allard said. “They kept trying to adjust to her, and eventually they hit her. Shelly pitched a great game, we just didn’t give her the offensive support she needed.”

The Crimson got little done on offense against Big Green starter Stephanie Trudeau. Kidder scored on a wild pitch in the first, but that would be it until the seventh, when Brown hit a solo home run to pull Harvard within one.

—Staff writer Ted Kirby can be reached at tjkirby@fas.harvard.edu.