April 21, 2006

Softball Hits the Road To Face Brown, Yale

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This weekend, the softball team travels to Providence, R.I., and New Haven, Conn., for two doubleheaders against Brown and Yale as the Ivy League race starts to thicken. Princeton leads the standings at 9-1 in the Ancient Eight, but the Red is right on its tail, only two games back with an Ivy record of 6-2. Princeton has four games remaining and Cornell has six, but in order to narrow the gap with the red-hot Tigers, the Red will need to have a strong weekend.

The Red had strung together a series of strong performances before stumbling against Syracuse on Wednesday. Cornell was swept by the Orangemen, losing by scores of 6-2 and 6-1. The Red came into Wednesday having won seven of its past 10 games. Sophomore Jenn Meunier leads the Red on the mound with a 2.26 ERA and 88 strikeouts. She’s also held opposing batters to a .233 batting average.

The Red bats have also been hot as of late. Despite the loss of sophomore Ashley Wolf, who was led the team in batting average, to a wrist injury, junior Erin Murtha and freshman Meghan Risca have shouldered the load and have been neck and neck in nearly every offensive category. They are both batting .315, both have 39 hits, and both have 22 RBIs on the season.

Tomorrow the Red will play two games against an inconsistent Brown squad. At 12-23 and 3-5 in Ivy League match-ups, Brown has been anything but dominating.

However, after a split with Dartmouth and a sweep of in-state rival URI, the Bears are carrying some momentum into tomorrow’s games.

Leading Brown, both offensively and defensively, has been senior shortstop Mary Seid. Last week she was named Ivy League Player of the Week for the second time this year. As the leadoff hitter, Seid went 7-for-14 at the plate with a .643 slugging percentage.

For the season her .422 batting average, .481 on base percentage and 11 stolen bases all lead the Ivy League.

Seid is also a clutch hitter when the pressure is on. When the bases were loaded and the Bears were down four runs to Harvard in a game last week, Seid came to the plate and hit a bases-clearing double to bring Brown within two. She was just the spark Brown needed to get going offensively and pull off an impressive, 11-10, come-from-behind victory.

On Sunday, the Red will head to Connecticut to play a doubleheader against Yale. While Yale has a great overall record of 25-17, it has encountered tremendous difficulty in the Ivy League. Yale has a 2-6 record in the Ancient Eight, but is the kind of squad that Cornell can’t afford to overlook. Rebecca Wojciak has been dominant on the mound for Yale, compiling a 1.62 ERA on the season with 69 strikeouts.

On the offensive side of the diamond, the one-two punch of Megan Enyeart and Katie Edwards has paced the Bulldogs.

Enyeart is a contact hitter with a .367 average and 51 hits while Edwards is the power hitter the Bulldogs count on to drive in runs, notching 7 home runs, 27 RBIs while hitting with a .566 slugging percentage this season.

Archived article by Lance Polivy
Sun Staff Writer