TO SAY THE LEIST: Harvard Can't Come Up With Final Rally

The stage was set. The Harvard softball team, a squad that had battled through offensive inconsistencies and a lack of pitching depth and experience, was just one win away from its third consecutive Ivy League North title.

After sweeping Dartmouth in Hanover on Saturday with two late-inning rallies, it seemed the conclusion was inevitable.

All the Crimson needed was one win. One win at home, on a gorgeous summer-like afternoon, on Senior Day.

What happened?

Harvard’s bats, which had produced 53 runs in the Crimson’s last seven games, were suddenly ice-cold. Freshman Rachel Brown had one off inning, but this time, there was nobody to pick her up.

That late-inning rally that had been Harvard’s calling card of late finally came in the de facto title game—but it came up short.

And when all was said and done, it was the Big Green who celebrated its first Ivy North title on Soldiers Field late Sunday afternoon, while the Crimson could only sit and wonder what went wrong.

In the immediate aftermath, it’s hard to view the season as anything less than a disappointment.

After returning eight of nine position starters from last year’s Ivy North championship team, and still carrying nine players who had won the Ancient Eight title in 2007, Harvard looked to be the odds-on favorite to get back to the ILCS and avenge last season’s sweep at the hands of Princeton.

Early on, it seemed that everything was falling into place for the Crimson. Most notably, Brown emerged as the dominant force on the mound that Harvard desperately needed—a role she filled throughout the season on her way to a 1.41 ERA and a single-season record 203 strikeouts.

With a bona fide ace and an experienced offense intact, Harvard rolled through the preseason with its best record in years, picking up two tournament wins along the way.

Of course speed bumps would come–most notably the sudden departure of junior slugger and first baseman Lauren Murphy. But the Crimson absorbed the loss without skipping a beat, as rookie Whitney Shaw took over the starting role with ease.

Shaw is now second on the team with a .303 batting average, leads the way with a .535 slugging percentage, and has made just five errors in 243 chances at first.

But the wheels started to come off at exactly the wrong time for Harvard. It was in the team’s opening Ivy games—a March 28 doubleheader at Columbia—that its offensive inconsistency reared its ugly head.

The Crimson mustered just one run in the twinbill, and the nightcap’s 2-0 loss marked the first of four times in the 20-game Ivy season that Harvard would be shut out.

As the Ancient Eight slate wore on, the Crimson experienced the highest of highs—a 6-5 win over Cornell on April 4 to hand the Big Red its first Ivy loss, a dominant sweep of Brown last Sunday in which the offense put up 23 runs, taking two from the Big Green in Hanover to gain the division lead—and the lowest of lows.

Two weeks ago Harvard was swept by Yale in a doubleheader that seemed to put the division title out of reach, and the team gave up seven runs with two outs in the bottom of the sixth against Brown to let the Bears blow open what had been a close game.

Lowest of them all, of course, was Sunday’s heartbreaking sweep.

What was most notable about the Dartmouth series is that the Crimson couldn’t stage a comeback. Against four of its seven Ivy opponents, Harvard rebounded from a loss to take the final game of the series.

Excluding two back-to-back victories over Penn, the early-season loss to Columbia and Sunday’s sweep are the only two aberrations.

The Crimson fought back from a deficit in its last three Ivy wins, and with the bats swinging the way they had been, it’s almost surprising that there were no late-inning heroics in Sunday’s twinbill.

Out of the disappointment, though, Harvard has something to look forward to. The Crimson graduates just two seniors this season, and though co-captains Hayley Bock and Bailey Vertovez have been vital to the team’s success, Harvard has junior Jess Pledger and freshman Jane Alexander waiting in the wings to step in and fill those spots.

Statistically, the team’s five best hitters and five best pitchers will return to Cambridge next season. An extra year of experience can only be beneficial for Brown and Shaw, and the Crimson’s strong junior class will provide a wealth of veteran leadership.

Harvard will have a chance to end the season on an up note Thursday with a road game at BU, but it seems that the bitter taste of Sunday’s losses will remain with the Crimson for a while.

At least, that is, until Harvard gets its shot at the biggest comeback of all—to rebound from disappointment and reclaim the Ivy League title.

—Staff writer Kate Leist can be reached at kleist@fas.harvard.edu.