Offensive Outpouring Seals Series Sweep at Yale for Softball

A day after blowing out Yale in a double-header by a combined margin of 25-3, the Harvard softball team nearly repeated the feat Sunday, winning 15-1 in five innings before finishing the series sweep with a 9-2 victory in the afternoon in New Haven. The Crimson has now taken 10 straight from the Bulldogs going back to 2009.

HARVARD 9, YALE 2

Two singles and a double in the top of the first frame gave Harvard (24-10, 11-1) an early 2-0 lead and provided a statement that this game would not be too different than the three that preceded it.

Ten Crimson batters reached base in the contest, and co-captain Whitney Shaw led the team with three RBIs while freshman Adrienne Hume tallied her first two RBIs since March.

Yale (7-27, 1-11) looked poised to answer the Crimson’s first-inning rally as the Bulldogs started the game with a single and a sacrifice bunt, but sophomore Laura Riccardione would have none of it. She quickly ended the inning by eliciting a ground ball out before closing out the side with a strikeout.

In the fourth, Harvard tacked on two more runs. Hume brought freshman Alexandra Del Conte home on a double to left field before scoring herself on a double by senior Jane Alexander.

On the weekend, Hume scored five times after crossing tallying just three runs coming into the series.

“One thing our coach was really proud about was the fact that almost every single player got into the game,” co-captain Rachel Brown said. “It shows that our team has a tremendous amount of depth. We aren’t just strong one through nine or one through 10. We are strong one through 21.”

Up 4-0, Harvard continued to pile on in the fifth, this time with small ball. A walk, a single, an error, and a sac fly brought the first runner home, then another runner came across on a groundout, and a single scored the third runner of the inning, giving the Crimson a resounding 7-0 advantage.

An inning later, the lead was 9-0 thanks to a Shaw double that scored two. Yale finally broke up Harvard’s shutout bid by pinning two runs on freshman Gabrielle Ruiz, who came in to relieve Riccardione after the starter gave up two hits and a walk in five innings of action.

The Bulldogs’ first two runs came on a triple by senior Meg Johnson, who went 4-for-10 on the weekend. Yale was unable to muster any more offense, and a scoreless seventh sealed the weekend sweep.

HARVARD 15, YALE 1 (5 inn).

Coming into the weekend, junior Jessica Ferri had given up more hits as a pitcher this year (five) than she had accrued at the plate (four). That changed Saturday, as Ferri notched her second, third, and fourth RBI in the Harvard softball team’s first two games of a four-game series versus Yale. Things got even better for Ferri Sunday.

With the bases loaded in the fourth inning, Ferri came into the game as a pinch hitter.

The junior continued her hot streak with a homer to left field. The grand slam doubled her RBI total for the season and gave the Crimson a 13-0 lead in what ended up being a third straight blowout of the Bulldogs.

“[Ferri] has really been working hard the last couple weeks on her technique, and we’ve seen her come on with some good work in practice, so we were looking to get opportunities for her this weekend,” Harvard coach Jenny Allard said. “We knew she was strong enough to get it to the outfield, but the gram slam was great. We had a lot of people in the game this weekend, and everyone was stepping up to help the team win.”

The Harvard offense began Sunday how it ended Saturday, tallying six quick runs in the first frame. The damage could have been worse, but sophomore slugger Kasey Lange hit into a fielder’s choice with the bases loaded to end the inning.

Lange made up for the missed opportunity with a sac fly in the third to give the Crimson its seventh unanswered run of the game. In the following inning, Ferri’s grand slam headlined another six-run outburst.

In the bottom of the fourth frame, the Bulldogs got their first hit off Rachel Brown since the first inning on a double by Tori Balta. Balta then gave Yale its first score of the game when she came home on a wild pitch.

Harvard came right back in the fifth as Lange notched her second and third RBIs of the contest to give the Crimson a 15-1 advantage. Brown surrendered a walk but nothing more in the bottom of the frame to lock up the mercy-rule victory.

—Staff writer Jacob D. H. Feldman can be reached at jacobfeldman@college.harvard.edu.