Softball: Tigers dig long ball in sweep

Princeton (12-14 overall, 7-5 Ivy League), the reigning Ivy League champion, stumbled at the start of league play and was three games behind division leader Cornell after eight games. A six-homer barrage in Sunday’s doubleheader with the Lions (12-24, 2-10) provided the Tigers a ray of hope and dramatically improved their chances of defending their title. Princeton took both Sunday games, 4-2 and 6-5, and then eked out two more one-run wins on Monday.

Last year, the Orange and Black lineup was a traveling fireworks show. Junior infielder Jamie Lettire and junior outfielder Kelsey Quist tied the team record for home runs in a season with 14 each, and senior infielder Kathryn Welch wasn’t far behind with 13 long bombs of her own. Moreover, these three Tigers weren’t just power hitters: Despite hitting .340, Lettire finished third on the team in batting average behind Welch and Quist.

This season, fate has not been so kind to Princeton’s stellar trio. Welch has hit at a .400 clip, but Lettire and Quist have been mired below .260 for most of the season. Head coach Trina Salcido was confident that her run producers did not have any mechanical flaws and were merely suffering from bad luck.

“[Quist] consistently hits the ball hard — it’s just this year she’s been hitting it at people,” Salcido said. “It hasn’t been falling in the gaps. It hasn’t been dropping in.”

Against Columbia, however, the Tigers’ most fearsome power-hitters figured out a way to solve that problem. Rather than hitting balls straight into opponents’ gloves, Lettire and Quist spent most of Sundayy sending balls soaring from Class of 1895 Field. Some of the home runs were so majestic that the Lions’ outfielders could only watch and shake their heads — there was simply no chance they would ever be caught.

“When they try not to do too much, that’s what happens: They hit it out of the park,” Salcido said. “The team can get loose when they know that two people are feeling it, especially those two.”

Sunday’s first game set the tone for the rest of the weekend. After Columbia starting pitcher Jessica Rakonza shut Princeton down for three innings, Lettire announced her presence in the fourth inning with her first home run of the series. It would be far from her last, however. Two innings later, Lettire led off against relief pitcher Erica Clauss. The switch from Rakonza to Clauss did not faze the experienced slugger, who saw three pitches before sending the fourth screaming out of the yard.

Lettire’s outstanding day at the plate seemed to help her performance in the circle as well. Despite starting off the day by giving up a leadoff double to Lions infielder Keli Leong and ceding two runs in the first three innings, Lettire buckled down and earned a complete-game victory. In her final four innings, Lettire allowed no walks and only three hits.

With the score tied at two, the opportunity to win the game ultimately fell into the hands of Quist in the bottom of the seventh inning. Freshman outfielder Nicole Ontiveros walked to lead off the inning and advanced to second on a sacrifice bunt. After Welch struck out swinging — an occurrence that has only happened five times this season — Quist came through in the clutch by mashing a two-run walk-off home run.

Columbia pitcher Maggie Johnson started the second game of the doubleheader with a team-leading 3.33 ERA but finished with a stinging reminder of her two losses to Princeton last season. Once again, the middle of the Tigers’ order inflicted most of the damage. Welch belted a solo home run in the first inning, Quist followed up with a double down the line, and Lettire drove in Quist with a single.

Two innings later, a walk for junior infielder Collette Abbott and a Welch single set up Quist for an ESPN-worthy home run that bounced off a tree beyond the center-field fence. Lettire quickly gave Princeton fans an encore by hitting her third home run — a blast to center field — in a three-hour span.

“I felt really good about my performance yesterday,” Quist said in an e-mail. “It’s an even better feeling when both [Quist] and [Lettire] were also hitting bombs.”

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Princeton’s 6-1 lead was put to the test by the Lions’ lineup. Columbia infielder Dani Pineda hammered her own three-run home run in the fifth and got the better of sophomore starting pitcher Michelle Tolfa again in the bottom of the seventh inning by connecting on her second home run of the game. Thankfully for the Tigers, Tolfa shut the door on Columbia for the final two outs and the 6-5 victory.

Princeton took to the field again Monday afternoon and earned two more wins against the Lions. Salcido’s belief that Lettire and Quist set the tone for the rest of the team was validated in the first game, when three other Tigers hit home runs to lead Princeton to a 6-5 victory.

In the first inning, Lettire, the starting pitcher. gave up an RBI double to Pineda. The Tigers quickly tied the game, however, as Ontiveros led off the bottom of that frame with a home run off Rakonza, her first career home run. Ontiveros went on to finish three-for-four with three RBI.

Princeton took the lead in the second off an RBI double from senior infielder Erin Miller, who struck again in the fourth with a solo home run. Two batters later, Abbott hit a home run of her own to give the Tigers a 6-3 lead.

Despite running into some trouble in the middle innings, Lettire pitched a complete game in earning her fifth win of the season.

In the final game of the series, Johnson took the hill for the Lions. Once again, Columbia scored first, as Johnson helped her own cause with an RBI double in the third inning that scored Pineda. Unfortunately for the Lions, Johnson immediately gave that run back when she faced the middle of the Princeton lineup. A Welch walk, a Quist single and a Lettire walk set up sophomore infielder Kristin Arguedas’ two-RBI single, which gave the Tigers a 2-1 lead.

Columbia’s defense struggled in the next inning as an error and a passed ball contributed to another two-run Princeton inning that bolstered the lead to three runs. The Lions, however, were not ready to go without a fight. Johnson homered in the sixth inning, and Columbia scraped together two more runs in the top of the seventh to tie the game.

Lettire found herself in the batters’ box in the final inning with the opportunity to secure the sweep and emphatically put her stamp on the series. Johnson had avoided the slugger all afternoon, walking Lettire in her three previous at-bats. When Johnson mowed through Welch and Quist, however, she decided to challenge the Tigers’ premier power-hitter.

The decision proved to be a mistake for the Lions. After taking Johnson’s first pitch for a ball, Lettire connected on the second pitch for the team’s second walk-off home run in the last two days. The 5-4 win was a picture-perfect ending to Princeton’s weekend set.

With their power hitters heating up, the Tigers’ chances of defending their Ivy League title are also soaring. Princeton hopes to maintain momentum from its four-game sweep of Columbia in its doubleheader against Rutgers on Thursday.