Sports Shorts: Weekend of Champions

Three Tiger teams win titles — softball, women’s lacrosse, and men’s track and field

Claire Klausner ’17, left, and Marissa Reynolds ’17 celebrate Princeton’s Ivy League softball championship.

Beverly Schaefer

Published May 8, 2017

Two Princeton teams won Ivy League championships over the weekend, and a third earned an NCAA postseason bid with an Ivy Tournament title.

SOFTBALL swept Harvard, 1-0 and 13-4, in the Ivy Championship series May 6, capturing its second straight league title and a return trip to the NCAA Championships. Pitcher Claire Klausner ’17 was stellar in the opener, allowing six hits while striking out eight in the shutout victory. In the second game, Princeton jumped ahead 6-0 before the Crimson clawed back, narrowing the gap to 6-4 in the bottom of the fifth. But the Tigers rallied with seven runs in the final two frames to win the title. Megan Donahey ’20 and Keeley Walsh ’19 each had three hits, while Kaylee Grant ’19 drove in four runs.

In WOMEN’S LACROSSE, Princeton was seeded fifth in the NCAA Tournament field following an outstanding pair of weekend wins against Penn and Cornell in the Ivy Tournament. Against the Quakers May 5, the Tigers avenged their only regular-season Ivy loss, exploding for seven straight goals in the second half en route to a 17-8 win. In the championship game against host Cornell, Princeton went ahead 10-3 early in the second half and held on for a 12-9 win. Olivia Hompe ’17 scored seven goals against Cornell and three against Penn, raising her season total to 70. Princeton will have an opening-round bye in the NCAA Tournament and will host the winner of Cornell and Notre Dame in the round of 16 on May 14.

At the Ivy Outdoor Heptagonal Championships in New Haven, MEN’S TRACK AND FIELD edged Cornell by seven points, 156-149. The contest came down to the final event, the decathlon, in which a pair of Princeton freshmen — Harry Lord and Justice Dixon — placed third and fifth, respectively, pushing the Tigers ahead. WOMEN’S TRACK AND FIELD placed third in the team standings, and Julia Ratcliffe ’17 won her fourth Ivy Heps hammer-throw championship, becoming the first athlete to accomplish that feat.

MEN’S LACROSSE fell to Brown, 17-15, in the semifinals of the Ivy Tournament at Yale May 5. Michael Sowers ’20 scored four goals and assisted on another, breaking Princeton’s single-season scoring record in his first year of collegiate lacrosse.