John Wentzell, who served as Harvard’s second softball coach from 1982-1988, points out that softball definitely evolved from being considered a secondary sport to a primary one during this transitional time in the mid-to-late 1980s.

“Most of our players were two-sport athletes with softball being the second sport,” Wentzell says. “Jen’s players have all been playing softball since Little League and their talent and dedication shows.”

In addition to the increased visibility and popularity of the sport, improvements in the game’s technology (livelier balls and bats, for instance) and the training methods of its up-and-coming athletes led to an explosion of offensive production that made the game more enjoyable to watch.

As Allard points out, the standards or success were much different when she played than they are now.

“People didn’t hit .450 when I played; if you hit .340 or .350, you were a phenomenal hitter,” Allard says.

Despite the explosion in production and the sport’s popularity, Allard believes that, all things considered, the talent level has remained constant, if just now more widespread.

“If you took the players now and put them in the game back then with the same equipment, you’d have a similar level of play,” Allard says.

Having shared the field with the likes of eventual Olympians Lisa Fernandez, Michelle Granger and Julie Smith, it’s hard to argue with Allard’s take. Then again, it is also clear that softball’s migration eastward and the diffusion and diversification of talent—a trend that Allard embodied in her own playing career—helped the sport catch on and grow at places like Harvard.

Coach Class

As Allard’s playing career has symbolized the rise of softball’s national popularity and its gradual evolution as a sport, so too has her coaching career come to symbolize the fundamental premise of Ivy League athletics.

As an assistant coach at nationally-ranked Iowa, Allard eventually grew dissatisfied with the growing intensity of sports and the imbalance between athletics and academics.

“I really didn’t like where I saw big-time athletics heading,” Allard says. “There was a lot of compromising of academics, a lot of focus on their four-year collegiate careers and nothing beyond that.”

Allard, always a good student herself and an Academic All-American in her last year at Michigan, decided to keep her eyes open for a more suitable opportunity to put her teaching skills to better use.

That opportunity came in the spring of 1994 when Allard saw a job posting for the Harvard head coaching position. Though initially unsure of the idea of applying to be a head coach, a few colleagues encouraged Allard to pursue the job.

Much like her campus visit that “just felt right,” Allard’s trip to Harvard that summer was all that was necessary to seal the deal. Allard became the fourth coach in program history in time for the 1995 season and began what she figured would not be a terribly long stint.