The Harvard softball team got back to where it belonged this season--on top of the Ivy League.

The Crimson avenged last season's Ivy title loss to Cornell and fought off a challenge from up-and-coming Dartmouth to secure its second league title in three years and a trip to the postseason.

"It's really exciting to go out like this--graduating with an Ivy League championship," co-captain Deborah Abeles said. "It's just everything we could have hoped for."

A second Ivy championship seemed far away when the Crimson started its season in early March. Harvard began the year 0-5 at the National Fastpitch Coaches Association Lead Off Classic in March. Most of its opponents there had been playing since early February.

The Crimson fared better in its first games against local competition. Harvard earned a win over Vermont with a trifecta of home runs from Abeles, junior catcher Mairead McKendry and sophomore infielder Cherry Fu. The Crimson followed that up with a split at St. John's on the strength of a shutout by sophomore Suzanne Guy.

Over spring break, the Crimson did not relax a bit, playing 12 games in 10 days between the Buzz Classic in Atlanta, a doubleheader at Virginia and the Hokie Classic at Virginia Tech. McKendry led the team with five home runs on the trip, but Harvard managed just three wins and came home with a 4-15 overall record.

But Harvard managed to turn its season around in its Ivy opener at defending champion Cornell. Junior pitcher Chelsea Thoke and Cornell sophomore Nicole Zitarelli were locked in a scoreless pitchers' duel until Abeles finally broke the stalemate with a solo game-winning shot in the fifth inning. Thoke pitched hitless ball for the full six innings of the rain-shortened game to earn the win.

The crucial victory allowed Harvard to bounce back from a rough start to its season, which was made even tougher by the difficulties the team faced off the field.

"The team's been through a lot of personal tragedies this year, and we've always been there for each other," co-captain Ghia Godfree said. "But through everything, we still managed to win the Ivy League title."

With the momentum gained from the Cornell win, Harvard went on to maul its league opponents in eight Ivy games over the next three weekends.

The Crimson outscored its opponents by a 70-20 margin over that stretch. The rain, which postponed seven of 12 scheduled games, was the only force capable of slowing down the unstoppable Crimson bats.

"We've done a wonderful job playing together as a team, and people have been stepping up at key times." Coach Jenny Allard said during the streak.

The only game in which Harvard ran into any trouble was the first Penn game. The last-place Quakers went up, 5-3, on Harvard in the fourth to give the Crimson a scare, but the Harvard bats erased the deficit, and back-to-back home runs from McKendry and sophomore outfielder Sarah Koppel in the sixth iced the 10-5 Harvard victory.

Harvard further asserted its Ivy dominance by completely flattening traditional Ivy power Princeton in a Sunday doubleheader. The sweep was a day to remember for freshman Tiffany Whitton, who pitched the Crimson to a 6-2 win in the first game and hit her first career home run to lead off the scoring in Harvard's 9-1 win in the second.

Even after all the blowout victories, the Crimson still needed a split with Dartmouth in the season's final week to secure the Ivy title.