NESCAC Softball | Jumbos must face their demons in 2006

Tufts enters the 2006 season looking to erase the cloud that hung over the end of last spring's 27-8 campaign, in which the Jumbos' season-long league dominance was rendered moot by two tournament losses to Williams. Williams pitcher Clara Hard did what few had been able to do all season when she silenced the Jumbos' booming bats. And she did it twice on the same day, ending Tufts' promising season short of a NESCAC title or an NCAA appearance. In the teams' first postseason meeting in the NESCAC tournament, then-junior Hard held the Jumbos to a single hit, a long ball by senior co-captain Courtney Bongiolatti, after which Hard retired the next 19 batters to end the game in five innings. After the Jumbos beat Trinity in the losers' bracket to force their way into the afternoon title game, Hard took the mound again, handing the Jumbo offense its first no-hitter of the season. The Williams bats backed her up, and the Ephs earned their second straight NESCAC Championship with a 9-0 thrashing of the Jumbos. "Clara Hard is a huge part of their success," sophomore pitcher Erica Bailey said. "She has a tremendous rise ball, so we as hitters need to stay in control and not help her out by swinging at her rise." With this season still to go, Hard holds the Williams record for most strikeouts (338) and lowest career ERA (1.26). She led the league in appearances last season with 27, recording a second-best 1.06 ERA, was named NESCAC Pitcher of the Year, and earned a spot on the NCAA Regional All-New England Tournament team. This season, she will be joined once again by one of the league's biggest offensive threats. Senior Alana Frost, a 2005 First-Team All-NESCAC and All-New England selection, brings her league-leading .413 batting average and 45 hits into 2006 as Williams looks to three-peat as NESCAC champions. The Ephs and the Jumbos were a cut above the rest of the NESCAC crop in 2005, jockeying with each other in the regional rankings throughout the season and finishing three-four in New England, with Williams on top. They finished the regular season with matching 7-1 league records, the Jumbos on top of the NESCAC East and the Ephs heading the NESCAC West, each responsible for the other's only loss. In the stat book, they led the league in all but two offensive categories, and most by a hefty margin. But it was the Ephs' 3-1 record against the otherwise impenetrable Jumbos that earned them the NESCAC crown, the NCAA berth, and the enmity of the entire Tufts roster. The rivalry, far and away the most intense in NESCAC softball, goes back further than Hard's heroics. For the first three years of the tournament's existence, the Jumbos defended their regular-season dominance and took home the trophy. But in 2004, Tufts coach Kris Herman- who had steered the Jumbos to five league titles and seven straight NCAA appearances from 1997 to 2003 - moved to Williamstown, and the Ephs won the NESCAC crown in that year and the next. If that chain of events has not signaled a new dynasty, it certainly has been a loud wake-up call to the old one, and the Jumbos are anxious to respond. "Oh, my God," sophomore Heather Kleinberger said. "They had better be ready. We've had our last year of getting beaten by Clara Hard."