HANOVER, N.H.—After three postponements over its last eight conference games, Harvard baseball finally got something it had expected from day one: a Red Rolfe Division title.

The Crimson (24-14, 15-5 Ivy) won sole possession of first place and a berth to this weekend’s Ivy Championship Series against Cornell by beating Dartmouth (13-20, 8-12 Ivy) yesterday in Hanover by a score of 10-6.

In a form befitting to the close of the Ivy stretch, however, victory was anything but painless.

HARVARD 10, DARTMOUTH 6

The Big Green’s Michael Madson plunked four batters in a tide-turning sixth inning as Harvard notched five runs to shatter a tense 3-3 deadlock. The entire batting order got at least one turn at the plate as the pitcher hit senior Ian Wallace, freshman Matt Vance, and sophomore Brendan Byrne in order to load the bases three separate times.

Junior Lance Salsgiver was hit in the helmet later on in the frame, finally earning Madson the hook.

“He was their Ivy a spot starter, their Javy Castellanos,” coach Joe Walsh said. “But suddenly, everything was up and in, up and in.”

That wildness—combined with two singles by juniors Zak Farkes and Josh Klimkeiwicz and two wild pitches—gave the Crimson a sizable lead it would refuse to relinquish.

“It definitely worked in our favor and shifted the momentum,” captain Schuyler Mann said. “The win is what we had always expected from our team since the season started.”

Klimkiewicz set the tone from the start by slugging his eighth home run in the top of the first, a bomb to the trees in left-centerfield. The shot, which tied Mann for the team lead, put an exclamation point on a resurgent season in which the junior was completely healthy for the first time in his college baseball career.

“He’s been huge,” Mann said. “Never count him out. He’s been in the three or four spot all season, and [pitchers] have been working him the hardest. He’s done a great job.”

Klimkiewicz’s classmate, Zak Farkes, continued a hot streak of his own as he went 3-5 with 3 RBI.

But it was Harvard’s phenomenal trio of freshmen, arguably, that made the lead permanently stand up.

Vance collected a bizarrely impressive stat line with four runs and three RBI on just one hit. That one knock of the game, incidentally, turned out to be his first collegiate home run—a drive to left on the first pitch he saw from Dartmouth rookie Kyle Zeis, his “best friend” and classmate at California’s Torrey Pines High School.

“Matt’s been getting on base for us, being a catalyst,” Mann said. “If we get some power out of him, we’ll be that more dangerous in the lineup.”