Junior co-captain TIFFANY WHITTON anticipates a changeup before driving it over the fence for the lone run in Harvard's 1-0 victory over Maine on Saturday.

A 12-4 start is uncharted territory for the Harvard softball team, but the Crimson is perfectly comfortable being there.

Over spring break, the Crimson won seven of 11 games, including three of five at Georgia Tech’s Buzz Classic tournament. Harvard lost twice in heart-wrenching fashion at Big East power Villanova, before winning a pair over struggling Lafayette and sweeping its home-opening doubleheader against Maine last weekend. As far as anyone on the team can remember, 12-4 is the best mark Harvard’s ever had coming out of spring break.

It’s not hard to see why starting so strong is so difficult for Harvard softball. Every season while other teams are opening in February, Harvard is still practicing indoors. The Crimson’s opponents so far this year had played 11 more games than Harvard on average. But the current squad has made up for that disadvantage better than any team before it, including the Ivy title-winning Harvard teams from the last two years that were 6-15 and 7-13 coming out of break.

The absence of nationally ranked west-coast teams from this year’s schedule can account for some of this year’s record improvement, but not all of it. So while the schedule hasn’t gotten tougher this year, the team itself has.

That toughness starts at the top with junior tri-captain and all-around leader Tiffany Whitton. Whitton—a .441 hitter with five home runs and 21 RBI thus far—not only leads the team in almost every offensive category, she also leads the pitching staff in ERA and has been perfect in the field.

Two other big reasons for Harvard’s hot start are pitching depth—the team regularly rotates five arms, up from three last year—and the immediate impact of the freshmen, most notably catcher Laura Miller and outfielder Lauren Stefanchik.

Miller, the Crimson’s third-best hitter at .351, has played with a veteran’s intensity at a position where Harvard had no returning players. Stefanchik, the Crimson’s second-best hitter at .407, has revolutionized Harvard’s aggression on the basepaths with her speed.

The improvement bodes well for a Crimson team that looks to keep pace with the ever-rising competition in the Ivies.

To maintain the bliss of its 12-4 start, Harvard will have to translate the lessons learned from those games into Ivy wins. Its first chance to do that—after three more non-league games this week—will be at Brown on Saturday.

Cooking Lobster

Whitton’s numbers alone don’t tell the whole story about her value to the team. She has been a consistent clutch performer in the past, and she lived up to that billing again in Saturday’s doubleheader sweep of Maine (12-16).

Whitton clubbed a walk-off home run to win the first game, 1-0, and hit a grand slam to pace a 7-3 rout in the second.

In the opener, Harvard senior pitcher Suzanne Guy and Maine hurler Jennifer Merchant kept the game scoreless until Whitton’s leadoff round-tripper in the bottom of seventh.

Whitton’s anticipation of a Merchant changeup was the difference.

“I knew [the changeup] would come at some point,” Whitton said. “She had been throwing it to everybody else, and I hadn’t seen it yet. I figured it would make an appearance at some time.”