OH MIA: Princeton University softball player Mia Valenzuela rounds third base after hitting a homer against Brown last Thursday in the opening game of the Ivy League postseason tournament. Freshman Valenzuela also added a double in the game to help the Tigers prevail 7-5. Princeton went on to win the double elimination event, topping Columbia 6-1 in a winner’s bracket game on Friday and then defeating the Lions 8-0 in five innings in the final in Saturday to clinch the title and earn the league’s automatic berth to the NCAA tournament. The Tigers, now 33-13, are headed to the Stillwater Regional where they will face Stanford on May 15 to open the double-elimination competition. (Photo by Frank Jacobs III)
By Bill Alden
After ending regular season play by losing two straight games to Dartmouth, the Princeton University softball team did some soul-searching last week before it hosted the Ivy League postseason tournament which started on Thursday at the Cynthia Lynn Paul ’94 Field.
“Considering how we took the losses last weekend, we had a lot of team meetings this week,” said Princeton freshman outfielder Mia Valenzuela. “One of the key things that we discussed was is that we are big enough for the moment, the moment isn’t bigger than us.”
With top-seeded Princeton trailing fourth-seeded Brown 4-0 in the second inning of its opener in the double-elimination competition on Thursday, the Tigers showed they were big enough for the moment.
In the bottom of the third, Princeton senior outfielder Abby Hornberger slammed a three-run double to cut the Brown lead to 4-3. An inning later. Valenzuela got into the act, belting a double off the left field fence and then came around to score to tie up the game.
After Brown went ahead 5-4 in the fifth, Valenzuela struck again as she blasted a solo homer over the left field fence to spark a rally that saw Princeton add two more runs to go up 7-5.
The Tigers ended up winning by that margin. As she reflected on the win, Valenzuela asserted that it resulted from a total team effort.
“It really just took every single person on the team,” said Valenzuela. “One through nine, everyone was producing in the lineup and then we came and our pitchers were giving us momentum. Everyone was building in top of each other.”
The Tigers kept up the momentum as they beat third-seeded Columbia 6-1 in a winner’s bracket game on Friday and they topped the Lions 8-0 in the final on Saturday to clinch the title and earn the league’s automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. Princeton, now 33-13 overall, is headed to the Stillwater Regional where it will face Stanford on May 15 to open the double-elimination competition.
Valenzuela was fired up to produce in her Ivy tournament debut.
“For the past couple of weeks, I wasn’t producing the results that I wanted to,” said Valenzuela, a 5’9 native of Houston, Texas. “Going into this game and going into my first Ivy League tournament, I was really thinking you know nobody is expecting me to hit a grand slam or anything. I am just going to do what it takes to get on base and get in scoring position for my teammates because I know they can score me in.”
On her homer, Valenzuela stuck to that approach. “It is always easier to take it one pitch at a time and just focus on squaring up the one pitch,” said Valenzuela.“I knew that I squared it up. I didn’t think it was going to go, I thought it was maybe like a deep fly ball.”
Valenzuela brought a good luck charm to the game to help spark the Tigers.
“My senior and junior year of high school, my dad bought beaded necklaces for our state championship and we had great outings,” said Valenzuela. “My parents are here today watching me and my dad bought me these two new necklaces as a gift. I brought them and I feel like it really brought up our team camaraderie. Whenever we had the hits we put on the beads and we were like yeah.”
For Valenzuela, the team’s camaraderie has helped ease her transition to college softball.
“It has been challenging, there is a lot of big pressure moments you have to get used to,” said Valenzuela, who had a hit in the win over Columbia on Friday and is now batting .352 with six homers and 25 RBIs. “The competitiveness really does go up. I really think that the support I have garnered with the team, the values that we have, the offseason and the preseason made that transition so much easier for all of our freshmen. I don’t think I would have found the success anywhere else.”
Princeton head coach Lisa Van Ackeren was confident that her club would compete hard in the Ivy tourney.
“I think we needed to treat this like a new season and to not let anything leak in and just stay to keep things as fresh as possible,” said Van Ackeren, whose team went 18-3 in Ivy regular season play this spring. “It was more of a recommitment to what we are about as Princeton softball. It is one thing at a time, a 1-0 mentality. That is our motto 1-0, we are just going to try to be 1-0.”
With the Tigers trailing 4-0 to Brown, Van Ackeren wanted her team to relax.
“I think what we have learned is that you have to name what you are feeling and work through it,” said Van Ackeren. “We were tight and tense a little bit. We wanted to open things up.”
Senior outfielder Hornberger helped loosen things up for the Tigers with her clutch double.
“Abby got us going in that situation, bases loaded with two outs,” said Van Ackeren. “Early in the year was something that was really hard for her. She has grown into that to not make that moment too big and to just do her job and barrel up a ball.”
Van Ackeren wasn’t surprised to see Valenzuela come through in big moments.
“Her double came after a strikeout; that is the thing about Mia, she has a very short memory,” said Van Ackeren. “She can recover and adjust really quickly. She did a great job. That homer was huge, coming on a changeup against a good pitcher. We worked on that all week so to see that work show up was really, really cool.”
The Tigers got good work throughout the order in the six inning rally as Maddie Ratcheson and Graciela Dominguez got big hits and Julieta Roa helped spark the rally with her base running.
“Maddie was great today, Gracie was great today,” said Van Ackeren. “Even the little things like Jet on the bases, she is so fast so we double steal. That was huge, she helped Sonia [Zhang] get safe at first…and just keep the momentum going. I think when those little things are done well it is really hard to stop us.”
Junior right-hander Cassidy Shaw got the start in the circle and worked through some jams before Brielle Wright pitched two scoreless innings of relief to get the win.
“Cassidy didn’t have a great day but she had nine strikeouts in five innings,” said Van Ackeren of Shaw, who was later named the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player as she started all three games for the Tigers, throwing 15 innings across the tournament and finishing strong, with just one run allowed on seven hits and a walk and eight strikeouts over her final 10 innings, all against Columbia. “When she is competing, she is at her best. She lost spin a little bit in the second inning. Outside of the second inning, Cass was dialed in, that is what we expect from her.”
The comeback by the Tigers gave them momentum that carried them to the title.
“That is something we have gotten a lot better at since last year,” said Van Ackeren. “We have won games coming from behind. I think early in the Ivies, especially the Columbia weekend comes to mind, we were down in two of the three games and had to come back. We have some memory of how to do that and to just settle in when that happens and believe in our offense.”
Valenzuela, for her part, is proud of the battling spirit the Tigers have developed this spring.
“I really think that it says like despite the consecutive wins that we had during our conference season, it shows that we still do have that grit,” said Van Ackeren. “There is no entitlement that we are going to win. It is like we know we can fight for every win that we have. Winning is hard and at the end of the day we can do it.”