The softball team will be looking to string together a couple of league wins this weekend as it heads to Brown and Yale for a set of doubleheaders.
The Red is currently 17-13, with a 2-2 Ivy record, which is good enough for a third place tie with Dartmouth and Columbia.
Harvard and Princeton are sitting atop the league, each having sustained perfect records in the first two weekends of conference play. The Crimson is 4-0 while the Tigers are currently 6-0.
Cornell’s season thus far has been a campaign of spurts. This weekend, the challenge for head coach Dick Blood’s team will be to put together a complete game in each of the four contests.
Sophomore pitchers Sarah Sterman and Nicole LePera remain the team’s one-two pitching rotation of choice, while the offense has come from different sources nearly every game.
The play of sophomore standout Kate Varde has been a mainstay in the Red line-up, and her near .400 batting average has been a lift when the rest of the Red bats go stagnant.
Freshman Lauren May and Melissa Heintz, along with senior Kristen Hricenak have also provided power in the line-up as of late. May currently leads the team in home runs, RBIs, and batting average.
Of course, the key to run production is getting people on base, an issue which will surely need to be addressed if the Red is going to string together another championship run.
However, the present concern is Cornell’s opponents this weekend.
Brown and Yale are tied for sixth in the conference, each claiming a 1-3 record last weekend.
Brown had been struggling with a nine game losing streak before defeating Dartmouth last Sunday in a late inning rally.
The Bears are led by senior second basemen Julia Iudicello, who is hitting .396 for the season and boasts a team-best 23 hits. She had five hits in six games last weekend and should provide pop in Saturday’s twin bill against the Red.
The Bulldogs have a very capable pitching staff that posted a 12 inning combined shut-out last weekend over Providence. Yale’s best player is junior Jessika Bartholomew, who leads her team in hits (34), doubles (7), home runs (5), and RBIs (24).
This weekend provides the Red an opportunity to finally get all of its parts moving together before heading into possibly its toughest weekend, when Cornell hosts Dartmouth and Harvard next week.
Both of this weekend’s doubleheaders will start at 12 p.m.
Archived article by Scott Jones