Hanover
After taming the Tigers, 6-0, during the first game, the hosts rallied from a four-run deficit during the second contest to claim it by a 6-5 score. The results boosted Dartmouth to 4-3 in Ivy League play and 5-21-1 overall.
Wait … five victories? From a program that hasn’t won fewer than 26 games in a season during the last four years? Not a problem, said third-year coach Shannon Doepking, whose squad won the 2015 Ivy title and finished a game behind Harvard in the North Division race last spring.
“I thought the team was resilient today,” said Doepking, whose current team leads the North with a .571 league winning percentage. Second-place Harvard is 3-3 and hosts Princeton in a doubleheader today while Dartmouth hosts Cornell in the makeup of a contest rained out Friday afternoon.
“Going down the stretch, we’re going to have to make plays and put up some runs, which we did today. That’s great to see.”
Said second baseman Alyssa Jorgensen: “The coolest thing about today was that the team’s vibe never faltered. Even after they got up on us early and we got back in the dugout, we knew we were going to chip away. Some teams get down in that situation, but we stayed super confident.”
Dartmouth began the season 0-17-1, a futility streak that stretched from Louisiana’s Cajun Country to suburban Atlanta to Los Angeles as the Big Green barnstormed across the country on its annual warm-weather swing. Doepking’s troops surrendered 10 or more runs six times and were shut out five times. Two of their opponents, No. 16 Louisiana-Lafayette and No. 15 UCLA, were ranked, while two others, Brigham Young and Kennesaw (Ga.) State, have each already won 27 games.
“When I put together my schedule, I want to see the best competition that we possibly can,” Doepking said. “I want to get ready for the Ivy League, and whether we start out like we did this season or we go 20-0, it’s just preparing ourselves for this moment right here. This is all that matters.”
Jorgensen said she and the team’s other three seniors and its coaches developed various ways to remain positive, even after setbacks such as 11-0 against Cal Poly and 19-2 versus Loyola Marymount.
“We were going to trust in the process and not be outcome-oriented,” she said. “If we kept having good at-bats and doing the little things right, it was going to add up to wins. All preseason, it was grinding it out and staying together as a team.
“A lot of the scores didn’t represent the way we felt we played. It came down to one throwing error or a strikeout where we swung at bad pitches.”
Ivy League play began last weekend with homestanding Columbia sweeping Dartmouth, which salvaged a split at Pennsylvania the next day. The Big Green knocked off Cornell on Friday before the teams’ second game was washed out. Next weekend brings a pair of doubleheaders with visiting Brown.
Dartmouth started Saturday by sending No. 1 pitcher Breanna Ethridge to the circle. The junior Georgian threw only 11 innings as a freshman before inheriting the No. 2 role last season behind senior Morgan McCalmon, who was the Ivy League’s player of the year in 2014. Ethridge chucked a four-hitter with three strikeouts and a walk. Her teammates had 10 hits, three by junior catcher Claire Bird, a first-year starter.
The Tigers (11-13, 4-2) had more bite during the second game, taking a 5-1 lead in the second inning against freshman pitcher Morgan Ebow, a product of Los Angeles’ suburban San Fernando Valley. The rookie allowed seven hits and five runs, four of them earned, in five innings. She walked four batters and struck out none. Ebow’s motion sometimes caused her windmilling arm to knock her visor askew, and she was called for four illegal pitches.
Ethridge is 4-13 with a 5.20 earned-run average, while Ebow is at 1-7 and 13.17. Tessa Grossman, the only other pitcher, is at 0-1 and 11.62. McCalmon was 16-7 with a 2.71 ERA and 116 strikeouts in 134⅓ innings last season, while Dartmouth’s current pitchers have combined for just 82 strikeouts in 170⅔ innings. Nonetheless, Doepking expressed confidence in her hurlers.
“I think our pitchers are just fine,” the coach said. “They’re going to let our defense work behind them and make plays, and that’s how we’re going to roll this year.”
Ebow was bailed out when Dartmouth scored once each during the third and fourth innings and three times in the fifth frame. A Bird bunt with runners on first and third and one out scored pinch runner Jade Bravo, and a two-out Lourlin Lara double plated Taylor Ward. The winning run occurred when Bird scored after a Calista Almer dribbler to third was bobbled.
Ebow held Princeton scoreless during the third, fourth and fifth innings and Ethridge earned her first save by allowing one hit and no runs during the final two frames.
“I don’t think we’re going to be a one-man show at all,” Doepking said. “You’re going to see contributions from the top to the bottom of our lineup.”
Notes: The longest losing streak in Dartmouth softball history? An 18-game stretch during the 1997 season, reported sports information man Tyler Morrissey. … McEachern is now a first-year assistant coach at St. Francis (Pa.) University. The Red Flash is 27-9. … Dartmouth freshman outfielder Sophia Ausmus is the daughter of fourth-year Detroit Tigers manager Brad Ausmus. He is a 1991 Dartmouth graduate who didn’t play for the Big Green, as he spent his college summers catching in the minor leagues. Brad Ausmus played 18 Major League Baseball seasons for several teams. … No Dartmouth team appears to be embracing use of the college’s “Lone Pine” tree logo more than the softball squad. Players wear the symbol on the back waistband of their uniform pants and in three different styles of decal on their batting helmets. … Waffle recently underwent anterior cruciate ligament surgery on each of her back legs, procedures that came with an $8,000 price tag. Fisher, a Middlebury College graduate and the director of sales and marketing for a local coffee company, created a gofundme.com page that raised the amount in fewer than two months.
Tris Wykes can be reached at twykes@vnews.com or 603-727-3227.