Top two Ivy teams duel on diamond

Chasing a championship is not always about being the best team for the span of the entire season — it’s about being hot at the right moment.

Fresh off its four-game sweep of Princeton last weekend and riding a five-game overall winning streak, the Penn softball team is currently the hottest team in the Ivy League.

The Quakers could not have caught fire at a better time. Penn (15-16-1, 6-6 Ivy) sits in second place, one game behind the team it plays four times this weekend, division leader Cornell (20-18-1, 7-5).

“It’s going to be a tough weekend, but I think if we keep playing like we did [against Princeton] that we can pull through, and we’ll do well,” predicted freshman pitcher Mikenzie Voves, who earned two complete-game victories against the Tigers.

With only six league games remaining in the season, the division title — which the Big Red have claimed the past two seasons — may be at stake.

Senior captain and catcher Alisha Prystowsky said she and her team will “need to take advantage of every opportunity” against Cornell as it did against Princeton.

“We played an aggressive game this weekend [against Princeton], and it’s going to take that same aggressive attitude against a good team like Cornell,” she said.

First baseman Kelsey Wolfe, one of just four seniors on the team, has had this weekend’s game circled on her calendar for a while.

“I’ve been waiting to play Cornell since last year,” she said. “They always give us a challenge, but this year I think we are going to step it up, and we are going to give them a challenge right back.”

To come out of the weekend in first place, the Red and Blue need to take three of four from the Big Red, but a daunting task stands in their way — they must defeat Cornell pitcher Elizabeth Dalrymple in at least one of her two scheduled starts.

Dalrymple, a Conestoga High School product, is the two-time defending Ivy Pitcher of the Year, and her career numbers against Penn are staggering.

Over the past three seasons, Dalrymple is 5-0 in six career games against Penn. She has a 1.79 ERA with 32 punch outs in 30-plus innings. All four of her starts have resulted in complete game victories.

Despite that dominance, Prystowsky said the team doesn’t have a “specific game plan” against Dalrymple.

Maybe that is because Prystowsky, unlike most of her teammates, has hit Dalrymple well — she boasts a .333 average against the Cornell right-hander in five games.

If Prystowsky has any secrets to hitting Dalrymple, she wouldn’t divulge them.

“I take the same approach against all the pitchers I face,” the catcher said. “I just try to make adjustments after my first at-bat in the game.”

For both Prystowsky and Wolfe, this is their last chance to lead Penn to a division title — something that has eluded the Quakers since 2007.

“Everything we’ve done up to this point has been to try to win the league,” Prystowsky said. “At the end of the day, this is why we play.”

Wolfe would like to see all of the team’s hard work translate into a championship.

“I think this team deserves it, and it’s not going to be given to us,” she said.

“As a senior, it would be a great way to go out.”

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