Last year, the young Crimson squad struggled with offensive inconsistencies. Harvard ranked first in fielding percentage and third in ERA in the Ivy League, but was sixth in the conference with a .267 batting average.

“It’s a matter of really pushing ourselves offensively,” Allard says, “and scoring the runs we need to score and having very timely hitting.”

This season, the Crimson defense—especially the pitching staff—appears to be the key to unlocking the team’s potential. Harvard returns sophomore Rachel Brown, last year’s Ivy League Rookie of the Year, to the rotation. Brown is coming off a season in which she set a new program record with 211 strikeouts, pitched 15 complete games, and earned first-team All-Ivy honors.

Joining Brown on the mound this season will be freshman Jessica Ferri, Black, and sophomore Julia Moore. All four of these pitchers will most likely be starters, giving the Crimson a more balanced rotation than it has boasted in the past.

“Our defense has been right on the mark,” Allard says. “That’s something that we’re confident in, we’re strong in. That’s something that we really need to feel, that our defense combined with our pitching can really limit and stop the opposition.”

Conference losses to division bottom-dwellers Columbia and Brown came back to haunt the Crimson last year as the season drew to a close, so it is a major goal of the team to limit early defeats in the hopes of securing its third trip to the Ivy League Championship Series in four years.

“Anything can happen,” Black says. “It’s a game of inches, so you’ve got to go out there with everything you’ve got, 110 percent, always. Any team can win. We play a lot of teams four times, so you just have to be on your game always and never take anyone for granted.”