Freshman first baseman Whitney Shaw exploded with the bat this weekend for the Crimson, hammering three home runs in four games. Shaw now leads Harvard with a .339 batting average, four home runs, and 18 RBI.

Once again, it took the Harvard bats just a little too long to wake up.

In a battle of the Ivy League’s top two teams, the Crimson softball squad and Cornell (26-6, 5-1 Ivy) split a twinbill Saturday afternoon at a windy Soldiers Field.

Strong pitching highlighted the opener, as Big Red hurler Elizabeth Dalrymple pitched a complete-game shutout to beat Harvard and its freshman ace Rachel Brown, 3-0.

But the Crimson offense came alive in the nightcap, putting up nine hits to snap Cornell’s 15-game win streak with a 6-5 victory.



“It was a battle,” Harvard coach Jenny Allard said. “Two good-hitting teams, they shut us down the first game, and we came right back and scored a bunch of runs in the second and jumped on them. That was good for us.”

HARVARD 6, CORNELL 5

The Crimson jumped out to an early lead and never looked back, holding on for a one-run win that marked the Big Red’s first loss of the Ivy season.

After sophomore Emily Henderson was hit by a pitch in the first inning, rookie Whitney Shaw launched a shot to right-center to give Harvard a 2-0 lead.

“To come out, score in the first inning, being ahead 2-0 in the first inning was really huge, and then every inning on thereafter, just don’t give them an inch,” co-captain Hayley Bock said. “Obviously we needed every run we got.”

The Crimson doubled its lead in the bottom of the second, when Bock got things started with a single up the middle. After Bock advanced to second base on a groundout from rookie Jane Alexander, junior Stephanie Krysiak, who is also a Crimson sports editor, ran out an infield single and stole second base.

Henderson laid down a bunt single to plate Bock, and Krysiak came home on an error from the Cornell shortstop.

The Big Red broke through in the fourth inning against freshman Julia Moore, who came on in the third to relieve junior Margaux Black, who opened the game with two scoreless frames.

Moore allowed two singles and plunked Cornell’s Ali Tomlinson to load the bases with no outs.

Co-captain Bailey Vertovez pitched a third of an inning before Brown entered the game to get the final two outs, but the Big Red plated three to make it a one-run game at 4-3.

Harvard tacked on two more in the bottom of the fifth. With the bases loaded and one out, Bock dropped a single into left field to score Shaw and junior Melissa Schellberg, who is also a Crimson sports editor.

“It’s obvious what we needed to do,” Bock said of the team’s offensive breakthrough in the second game. “It’s just a matter of playing with heart and getting it done.”

Cornell got back within one in the top of the seventh on a two-run bomb from Jessy Berkey, but Brown struck out Tomlinson to get the save in 3.2 innings of relief.

CORNELL 3, HARVARD 0

Brown struggled in her first Ivy start at home, and the Harvard offense offered the rookie little support as the Big Red easily took the first game, 3-0.

The troubles for the Crimson started in the top of the first, as Brown uncharacteristically hit the first two Cornell batters.

The pair came home on an Ashley Garvey single to jump out to the early 2-0 lead.

Brown settled down to earn the last two outs by strikeout, but the damage was done.

“[Brown] struggled at the beginning of Game 1,” Allard said. “She wasn’t getting her rise ball spins working. It was a struggle the whole first game, so we gave her the opportunity with the lead [in Game 2] just to try to continue to work on things.”

Brown went the distance, allowing one more run on a fourth-inning homer from Vanessa Leonhard but striking out seven to move up to eighth on Harvard’s career strikeout list.

Sophomore Ellen Macadam had two of the Crimson’s four hits in the game, with leadoff singles in the first and third innings. Harvard’s best chance came on a long fly ball off of Shaw’s bat, but the wind—which at times exceeded 20 mph—robbed the rookie of a homer.

“She got all of that ball,” Allard said. “If you hit it to the right side, it was going to go out, if you hit it to left field, nothing was going out.”

Schellberg and Vertovez had the other two hits for the Crimson, but the team was unable to move a runner past first base over the last four innings of the game.

—Staff writer Kate Leist can be reached at kleist@fas.harvard.edu.