Boston
It’s the second consecutive season Dartmouth has come up short against the Crimson during the regular season’s final weekend. The Big Green edged Harvard for the 2013, 2014 and 2015 division crowns and claimed the Ivy League championship series and the league’s automatic NCAA tournament berth during the second and third years of that stretch.
Third-year coach Shannon Doepking, whose team was three games up on Harvard with eight games remaining in the teams’ Ivy schedules, said she was proud of it for rebounding from a 1-18-1 start. Dartmouth had a sophomore pitcher who choose to leave the program two weeks before the season’s start, another hurler who battled through injury and a third who took to the circle, although she hadn’t expected to do so.
“People who knew what was going on would never have expected us to get this far,” Doepking said. “It takes a certain type of person to not give in to the losses and then be in a position to compete for a championship.
“I think we all knew it was going to be an uphill battle on the mound, but we fought hard. No excuses, though; at this time of the season you need timely hitting and we didn’t get it.”
Harvard, which claimed the second game, 8-0, in 4½ innings, used a pair of three-run home runs by Olivia Giaquinto to win the first contest. Dartmouth produced eight of the game’s first nine runners, finished with 13 hits and led, 2-0, after its fourth at-bat. The visitors, however, stranded 12 runners. The Crimson has won eight of its last 10 games.
Big Green pitcher Breanna Ethridge (9-18) allowed nine hits and eight runs, all earned, while striking out two batters and walking two. The junior threw 164 of her team’s 210 innings this season, roughly twice the workload she shouldered last spring.
After scoring single runs during the first and fourth innings, Dartmouth watched Giaquinto, a freshman from suburban Washington, D.C., smack the first of her home runs. Elizabeth Shively followed immediately with another round-tripper, this one a solo blast.
Down, 4-2, during the fifth inning, the Big Green stranded its seventh and eighth runners after Harvard relived starter Cathleen Duncan with Taylor Cabe. The bottom of that frame brought another Giaquinto home run, this one slicing just inside the left field foul pole, and giving the hosts a 7-2 lead.
The Harvard dugout erupted, the players within jumping and shouting in unison, “I believe that we will win!”
Dartmouth cut its deficit to 7-4 during the sixth inning but catcher Claire Bird struck out looking with a runner on second to end the rally.
“There’s so much more to this program than the outcome today,” Doepking said. “Last year at this point, we identified that we didn’t put in as much work as we could have. This year, the kids did that work, but we couldn’t get the hits when we absolutely needed them.
“We’ve created a culture where the kids realize you need to do more beyond the two hours of practice every day to master your craft.”
Dartmouth was 11-28-1 overall and 10-10 in league games, its worst Ivy mark since going 7-13 in 2012. Harvard, which advanced to visit South Division champion Princeton in the league’s best-of-three title series, is 22-17 and 13-7.
Notes: The first game began after a 51-minute rain delay. … Harvard’s Erin Lockhart was hit by a pitch for the 18th time this season on Sunday, tops in the Ivy League. … Several former Dartmouth players attended the game, including Kelsey Miller and Kathy Dzienkowski, who huddled under a quilt together. Miller is working in health care consulting and living in Minneapolis’ Uptown neighborhood. Dzienkowski is teaching kindergarten in New York City. … The only New England resident on either team on Sunday was Harvard’s Chanel Varney, who hails from Sandy Hook, Conn. … Cornell, which won four South Division titles and three league crowns from 2009-12, finished 13-27-1 overall and tied for last in the Ivies this year at 6-14. … Imagine the home plate umpire’s surprise during the second game’s fifth inning when he strode to the press box and ordered the field’s lights turned on. The facility does not have them.
Tris Wykes can be reached at twykes@vnews.com or 603-727-3227.