Junior tri-captain TIFFANY WHITTON slides home and ultimately scores on a Rachel Goldberg squeeze.

The Harvard softball team’s season may have ended yesterday without an Ivy title, an NCAA bid or a thousand-strong crowd of ardent supporters. But what it did have—the best record in school history, the school’s first ECAC championship, and a thousand-strong horde of sweet memories—was plenty to be happy for.

“It was a great year for us,” said junior tri-captain Tiffany Whitton, the Ivy League Player of the Year and ECAC tournament MVP. “31 wins—that’s something to be proud of.”

Wins 29 through 31 came this weekend as Harvard wrapped up the ECAC title.

Harvard opened up the four-team double-elimination tournament with wins over Columbia and Cornell on Saturday. The Crimson met the Lions again yesterday and dropped the day’s first meeting 4-2, but came through with a resounding 10-2 victory to close out the championship.

Because the Crimson was unlikely to earn an at-large bid to NCAAs—a suspicion that was confirmed when selections were revealed last night—Harvard Coach Jenny Allard decided to play in the ECAC tournament to provide a positive close to the season.

“The reason I pushed for [playing in ECACs] is I felt this is a team that should go postseason and this team would do very well postseason,” Allard said. “We had a great season and this concludes it on a high note.”

Several Crimson players took their games to the next level for the postseason. Sophomore middle infielders Sara Williamson and Rachel Goldberg pounded the ball throughout the tournament. Senior pitcher Suzanne Guy earned a complete game shutout on Saturday and freshman Lauren Tanner, who hadn’t tallied a victory all season, earned two this weekend.

Whitton, however, couldn’t take her game to the next level because she has always been outstanding.

The MVP hit 9-for-12 with a home run and four RBI to up her season average to .457. More crucially, she drove in Williamson for the game-winning run on Saturday against Cornell.

“Let’s clone her,” Allard said of Whitton. “Look at what she can do. She’s an incredible hitter.”

There was no mistaking Harvard’s desire to get another shot at Cornell at ECACs. The Big Red and its ace Sarah Sterman ended the Crimson’s Ivy title hopes by a 5-1 count on April 21. Princeton, who had swept Cornell and split with Harvard, went on to win the Ivy title. The Crimson made a much better effort against Sterman on Saturday, leaving Allard thinking what-if.

“If we would have done this and came out like we did, this game, against Cornell at their place, we would have been having a play-in against Princeton,” Allard said.

But the Crimson didn’t get that chance. Instead Princeton was the team to earn a No. 4 seed—the Ivy League’s highest seed since the field expanded to 48 three years ago—in a six-team NCAA Regional. The lack of an Ivy title, however, didn’t detract from this young team’s achievements.

“We had an unbelievable season and we played actually, in totality, better than we did last year [when we split the Ivy title],” Allard said.

Harvard 10, Columbia 2