For the second consecutive year, the Ivy League Championship Series comes down to the University of Pennsylvania and Dartmouth, and the winner will secure the Ivy League’s automatic bid in the NCAA softball tournament.
Last year’s Ivy League championship required all three games. Dartmouth defeated Penn 6-2 in game two after losing 1-0 in game one. Penn then won the series, with a 3-2 victory in game three that ent the Quakers to the tournament and Dartmouth home for the summer.
At the time, the two teams were well-matched on paper, both 14-3 in the Ivy League heading into the series.
This year, the narrative has changed somewhat and the Big Green (29-16, 18-2 Ivy) will enter as the favorite looking to claim its first Ivy League title and first NCAA tournament berth. Dartmouth’s 18 conference victories are the highest in program history.
Penn (18-20-1, 13-6-1 Ivy) on the other hand has had an up-and-down year marked by moments of outstanding play and disappointing letdowns.
Last month, on April 5, Penn visited Hanover for a Saturday doubleheader. Dartmouth squeaked by 3-2 in the first half before dealing a crushing blow in a 12-1 five-inning win the second game.
“We’ve seen their pitcher before and we kind of know what’s coming but I think it’s going to be really big to battle every inning,” Kara Curosh ’14 said. “They’re a good team and they can come back any time.”
“They’re a great team,” head coach Rachel Hanson said. “They’ve got a great pitcher, they can swing the sticks and they’ve got a great freshman player in Leah Allen that we have to prepare for.”
Junior Alexis Borden, Penn’s star pitcher, is the current Ivy League pitcher of the week after pitching, and winning, three complete games against Columbia last weekend to earn the South Division title as well as becoming the 18th player in Ivy League history to record 50 career wins. In 17 innings, she allowed just one earned run and struck out 15 hitters, and is about to break the 500-career strikeout mark, a milestone Kristen Rumley ’15 broke two weeks ago.
“We’ll attack the game the way we have the last week, if not the whole season,” Hanson said. “[We’ll] have great at-bats, we’ve got the best 1-2 combo in the league in Kristen Rumley and Morgan McCalmon [’16] and we’ll continue to play great defense.”
Rumley and McCalmon will need to be wary of two prolific freshman hitters for the Quakers — Alexis Sargent and Allen.
After belting three home runs and six RBIs, Sargent is on a recent hot streak, increasing her season home run total to nine, to earn Ivy League Rookie of the Week.
Allen has 13 homers this year, which broke Penn’s single-season home run record. Allen currently trails the Ivy League freshman home run record by three and the single-season record by five.
With a League-high batting average of .384, Allen is trying to become the second player in Penn’s history to win the Ivy League’s batting title and the first freshman to win since Cornell’s Kate Varde did so in 2001.
Currently ahead of Allen for the batting title is McCalmon, who leads the league with a .424 batting average. She would be the first Big Green player to win the Ivy League’s batting title.
On Tuesday, McCalmon was named Ivy League player of the week for the third time this spring for her performance during Dartmouth’s series win over Harvard, which secured a spot in the championship and Dartmouth’s third division title. McCalmon was productive at the plate and on the mound, registering six hits, four RBIs and a home run to go with two wins and 19 strikeouts in the circle.
Much of the series will revolve around the team’s ace pitchers and big hitters. Borden will likely start two, but Dartmouth may be able to capitalize with a timely hit if she starts to fatigue due to her heavy recent workload.
Since the championship series started in 2007, the home team has won all seven.Home-field advantage could play a major factor, Hanson said.
“It will be a great series,” Rumley said. “We’ve got a little unfinished business with them from last year.”
The article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction appended: May 2, 2014
The original version of the online version of this article was mistakenly accompanied by a photo of men's lacrosse players. The photo has been removed.
