Softball: Tigers battle through challenging season

“I think it’s fair to say that we’re all a little bit disappointed,” head coach Trina Salcido said. “We had high expectations for our freshmen and for our seniors, and at the end of the day, I think we endured a lot of obstacles, whether it be injuries or setbacks, the kind of things that were unavoidable and you just had to roll with.”

The 2010 season was the swan song in the softball careers of seniors Jamie Lettire, Kelsey Quist, Collette Abbott and Ellen Scott, all of whom won the Ivy League title in 2008.

“What’s important to me is that I create memories and have fun with my teammates and just enjoy playing the sport, and that doesn’t necessarily mean that we have to win every game to enjoy ourselves,” Quist, an outfielder, said about the season.

Princeton began its season shaking off some rust at College Park, Md., where it dropped four of five games in the Maryland Tournament. The team’s struggles continued on its spring break trip to California, where it fell in six of its first eight games before rebounding with three out of five victories at the Stanford Tournament in Palo Alto, Calif.

The Tigers came back encouraged by their late-trip success, but a brutal 11-game losing streak — including an 0-5 start to the Ivy League season — took its toll on the team.

“It’s just hard when you’ve lost so many games in a row to get yourself out of a rut, so the beginning of the Ivy season with dropping four to [Harvard and] Dartmouth was kind of the low point,” Quist said.

After that tough stretch, the team began putting some wins together. In their four remaining series, the Tigers came away with a victory against Brown, three against Columbia and one each against Penn and Cornell, the powerhouse that brought home its second consecutive Ivy League championship this season.

“The highest point of the season obviously was the last couple games, because we definitely had nothing to lose, and especially as seniors, we were purely out there trying to have fun and enjoy our last four games here,” Quist said. “Beating Cornell showed the potential our team has for the future to come together and have fun and hopefully gather a few more wins on the board next year.”

“The great thing is our freshmen, all the way through our seniors, were great about being resilient and about staying positive and being great teammates and continuing to compete,” Salcido added. “I think they showed that by the way they came out and played the last doubleheader against Cornell. They were unwilling to fold for their last home games.”

For Quist and Lettire, the Cornell series capped a season of racing through the program record book. The duo ended their careers in sixth and eighth place, respectively, in both career extra-base hits and career RBIs.

Most impressive, though, is that the pair ended the season as Princeton’s most prolific home run hitters. Lettire stands atop the program with 38 homers, with Quist just one below at 37. The seniors never lost sight of the team’s goals in their pursuit of numbers, though.

“We’d been trying not to think so much about how many home runs we had or if we were making the record books,” Quist said. “I was trying to do the best I personally could in order to help out the team and score more runs.”

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As the four seniors graduate, a strong class of seven freshmen that the team bolstered this year will take on an even more important role next year.

“I think the freshman class was a great asset to the team and just kept everything upbeat,” Quist said. “They’re just here to play and have fun, and they’re excited about being at a Division I team playing the sport that they’ve been playing for so long.”

“I think collaboratively it was a great year for the freshmen to get a lot of experience under their belts,” Salcido added. “If you can endure a losing season and have your character stay intact, then when you’re on the winning side of things you’ll remember that it’s a privilege and it’s not something that comes easily, and they’ll appreciate it that much more.”

While the team might not have accomplished the goals the players set for themselves on day one, it stayed positive throughout the season.

“It’s great that they can come off a disappointing season and walk away on their final day with great character and knowing how to endure defeat and do that with their head held high,” Salcido said. “That’s a high point as an athlete.”