In the mid-90's, two events dramatically altered the course of Ivy League softball: Cornell's hiring Dick Blood to develop its fledgling softball program and Harvard's hiring of Jenny Allard to revitalize a softball team that hadn't had a winning Ivy season since 1989.

Since arriving in 1996 season, Blood has transformed Big Red softball into one of the most successful programs at the school. Cornell athletics have produced just three Ivy titles over the past three years. Two of them belong to softball.

Only the Crimson softball team has found more success than Cornell in recent Ivy seasons. Through seven seasons at Harvard, Allard has won three Ivy titles and placed no worse than second. In the 14 years before Allard's arrival, Harvard finished as high as second just twice.

The two schools have combined to win every Ivy title since 1998. So when 2001 Ivy co-champs Harvard and Cornell face off in an playoff series tomorrow afternoon at 1 p.m. at Soldiers Field, it will hardly be the first time the schools have met with their respective seasons on the line.

The Harvard-Cornell rivalry begin in earnest in 1997, when both teams earned berths in the ECAC tournament, which brings together the top four eastern member schools that fail to make NCAAs. Harvard swept Cornell during the regular season, but the Big Red came back to take two of three games from the Crimson in the postseason to take the ECAC championship.

One year later, both Harvard and Cornell each landed pitchers who made immediate impacts for their respective teams-present-day seniors Chelsea Thoke of Harvard and Nicole Zitarelli of Cornell. Thoke and Zitarelli are entirely different pitchers. Thoke is a strikeout pitcher. Zitarelli is not. Both have found great success with their contrasting styles. The fate of this weekend's playoff rests largely in their hands.

Zitarelli is just 2-3 for her career against the Crimson, but those two wins stand among the most important in Cornell softball history. Thoke has won four of five career starts against the Big Red. Her first victory against Cornell came just over three years ago, on a day that Crimson softball made history.

Harvard Claims First Title