Tigers to Honor Seniors, Host Cornell This Weekend

Saturday, May 5

Princeton, N.J.

12:30 PM

Princeton University

Cornell

Seniors Kylee Pierce, Danielle Dockx and Ashley LaGuardia will play their final games with the Princeton softball team this weekend.

Photo by: Beverly Schaefer

Tigers to Honor Seniors, Host Cornell This Weekend

May 02, 2018 | Softball

The 2018 season will come to a close this weekend for the Princeton softball team when the Tigers host Cornell for a three-game series with two Saturday and one Sunday, both 12:30 p.m. starts at the Class of 1895 Field.

Admission is free, and links to live stats and the Ivy League Network broadcasts are available on the schedule page here.

Half the league has completed the 21-game Ivy League circuit and half will play this weekend, but the two teams who will compete in the Ivy League Championship Series are set, with Harvard and Dartmouth getting those spots. The only item to settle with this weekend's other series, where Dartmouth hosts Brown, is where the ILCS will take place. If the Big Green win this weekend's series, it'll be in Hanover. If Brown wins the series, it'll be in Cambridge.

For the Tigers, the series is a chance to send off their three-member senior class including pitcher Ashley LaGuardia, outfielder Kylee Pierce and infielder Danielle Dockx, all of whom were part of two Ivy League championship teams in 2016 and 2017 and will be recognized prior to Saturday's games. The 2016 season saw Pierce earn second-team All-Ivy League recognition.

Rookie outfielder Mackenzie Meyer enters the weekend tied for the program's freshman home run record with seven, a number most recently hit by a rookie when current junior Kaylee Grant became the third to do it alongside Melissa Finley '05 and Jamie Lettire '10. Junior Kaitlyn Waslawski enters the weekend with 42 stolen bases, tied for eighth all-time and just 14 away from matching a record she'll have all of next season to pursue.

Meyer is also the team's top hitter for average, at .341, leading four Tigers hitting better than .300 on a team with a .267 average. Rookie Allie Reynolds (6-14, 5.25) and LaGuardia (3-8, 7.14) have handled all the Ivy League starts for the Tigers.

Cornell (13-24, 8-10) is hitting .288 as a team with Erin Rockstroh (.432) and Megan Murray (.409) both hitting better than .400 and Murray getting 13 doubles with Bridgette Rooney's six homers leading the Big Red. Lisa Nelson (7-6, 3.74) and Katie Lew (5-10, 5.09) have thrown 181 1/3 of the team's 241 1/3 innings.

The weekend will be a matchup of two of the nation's top 10 toughest players to strike out, with Tiger junior Allison Harvey, hitting .286, entering the week as the nation's ninth-toughest player to strike out, fanning only three times all season while getting 32 hits, and Cornell's Murray ranking sixth, striking out only three times and getting 52 hits. The Big Red were also 14th with 1.59 doubles per game, and Rockstroh had the nation's 19th-best batting average with Murray also in the top 100 at No. 58.

The teams split last year's series with each team taking half of a doubleheader on its own field. The Tigers swept four from the Big Red in 2016, and Cornell last won a series against Princeton in 2012, getting a sweep at '95 Field.