When senior pitcher Jamie Lettire audibly urged a towering fly ball to stay fair in the bottom of the seventh inning of a 6-4 loss to Dartmouth on Saturday afternoon, the moment seemed to encapsulate the softball team’s weekend. The ball faded into foul territory but cleared the left-field fence, a close miss like much of the weekend was for Princeton (6-21 overall, 0-4 Ivy League). The Tigers dropped all four of their Ivy League games at Class of 1895 Field, falling twice to Harvard (9-15, 3-1) and twice to the Big Green (3-17, 2-2).
The weekend began on a rough patch for the Tigers, as Harvard’s starting pitcher Rachel Brown no-hit the team in its first game against the Crimson. Brown struck out the Tigers seven times, and Princeton lost 4-0 in the disappointing Ivy League debut.
“[Rachel Brown’s] a great pitcher, I give her a lot of credit,” Lettire said. “But I definitely think we could have hit much better because we did well against her last year, so I think it was a case of us just not making adjustments.”
Harvard scored two runs in the third inning on an RBI single and a passed ball then tacked on two insurance runs in the seventh. Freshman Alex Peyton pitched a complete game in the circle for Princeton, giving up nine hits and four unearned runs.
Princeton came out energized in the second game of the twin bill, striking early in the first inning when Lettire doubled home sophomore outfielder Nicole Ontiveros. The Tigers lost their edge, though, and were unable to score for the rest of the game in a 3-1 loss.
“I have no idea what happened. We’ll start off strong and then we’ll lose a little bit of momentum and have trouble getting it back,” Lettire said. “Those sorts of things just seem to be happening, and we need the sort of fight to hold on to our momentum as opposed to relinquishing it.”
Harvard also had trouble getting its bats going until the sixth inning, when the team erupted for its only three runs of the game. The Tigers came out strong again in the seventh inning when Ontiveros reached base on a bunt single and stole second, but the team was unable to mount a comeback.
The team’s first game against Dartmouth was a marathon competition, which the Big Green ultimately won 5-2. The 10-inning game was the longest hosted at Class of 1895 Field in five years.
Princeton struck first again in the game, scoring on an RBI single by senior outfielder Kelsey Quist and a home run by Lettire to establish a 2-1 lead in the third inning. But the Big Green battled back to tie the game at two in the sixth, and, after three innings of extra play, finally prevailed with three runs in the 10th.
The second game of the twin bill against Dartmouth was a highlight for Lettire, who hit her team-leading eighth home run of the season and the 37th of her career. The home run ties her with Melissa Finley ’05 for the most in program history. The individual achievement was mired by another Princeton loss, though, as the Tigers fell 6-4.
“I think it was downplayed by the outcome of the game, but it was cool,” Lettire said of her record-tying home run.
The Big Green jumped out to a 4-1 lead in the game, and while the Tigers fought back to tie the game in the fifth on RBI singles by Quist and junior third baseman Megan Weidrick, the team gave up two runs in the seventh.
Lettire was left confounded by the team’s struggles over the weekend.
“It just seems like there’s something we’re missing as a team that fires us up,” Lettire said. “So we’re really going to go back to work on that — not skills, but more of the team unity.”
Princeton plays its last non-Ivy competition on Tuesday with a game against Hofstra, where it will try to reverse its fortunes.
“We’re going to really try and mix things up against Hofstra just to find anything that works,” Lettire said. “We’re going to make some small adjustments with our own approach as a team and people’s individual approaches to the game, and I think those will translate into better outcomes.”
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