The Brown & White

The women's softball team will end regular season play with six home games, beginning with a doubleheader against the Princeton University Tigers on April 22 at the Kaufman Field.

The team is 30-12-1 on the season and 10-4 in league play, which earns the Hawks the top slot in the Patriot League.

Princeton has a perfect league record in the Ivy League with a 14-0 record. Despite the Tigers' league record, they are 5-19 in non-conference games, leaving them 19-19 on the season.

The Tigers boast seven NCAA tournament appearances and 16 Ivy League titles.

After splitting last year's doubleheader with Princeton in a 10-2 win followed by a 3-2 loss, Lehigh is looking forward to the chance of having a clean sweep this year.

Head Coach Fran Troyan said Lehigh and Princeton have been very competitive in the past and expect the trend to continue.

"Princeton and Lehigh have historically been two of the top softball programs in the Northeast," he said. "We are looking forward to the games."

Over the past five years, the Tigers and Hawks have met a total of 14 times. Since 2003, Princeton has won nine out of the 14 matches. In the past two years, Lehigh has had more wins with a record of 3-2 against the Tigers.

Sophomore catcher Lauren Eichblatt said stringing together a pair of strong defensive games will be the key to securing victories against the Tigers.

"We need to play solid games," she said.

Sophomore pitcher Tiffany Curtis said the Hawks will have to play their best to beat Princeton.

"They're all really aggressive hitters and they don't make a lot of errors," Curtis said. "It's important to keep working on the fundamentals and finish out the season strong. The weekday games are to help us work on what we've done wrong in the past and to help prepare us for the weekend games."

To produce a strong defense, the Hawks will focus on Princeton's key hitters: sophomore pitcher Jaime Lettire, sophomore outfielder Kelsey Quist and junior infielder Kathryn Welch.

Lettire leads Princeton in multiple hit games, while Quist leads the Tigers in multiple RBI games.

Heading into the match up the Hawks will be coming off of a four-game weekend in Worcester, Mass. against Holy Cross College.

The Hawks split the first doubleheader with Holy Cross, winning the first game 9-2 and losing the second 8-5.

The Tigers will have just finished a similar weekend, with four games against the University of Pennsylvania.

Heading into the game, junior catcher Ali Torborg said the team has a few problems to work on before facing Princeton.

"There's not really one issue. We're making both mental and physical errors," Torborg said. "We let teams in there in the sixth and seventh innings to the point where they're beating us. We need to remain focused for all four games of a series."

Freshman catcher Carly Potock said the lack of mental focus has been costly for the Hawks in not being able to pull away from teams and finish the whole way through.

"We let teams hang in there too long and we become too relaxed," Potock said. "We need to continue to work on our mental focus: every pitch of every game. And we need to work hard on producing runs. There have been times this season where we tend to leave runners on base."

Although the squad might need to make improvements, Troyan said the squad is not just looking to improve its winning record against Princeton.

"Hopefully they will prepare us for important Patriot League games against Colgate [University]," he said.

Eichblatt said the Hawks want to be fully prepared for the Colgate games, especially because they are looking to secure home-field advantage for the Patriot League tournament.

"Finishing out the season with wins is the best way that we can prepare for the tournament," Eichblatt said. "We need to finish strong and feel really good about our performance."

Eichblatt said though the team has been very successful on the road, it is looking forward to finishing off its season at home.

"We will have added fan support and comfortable surroundings, which will give us an edge," she said.

The first pitch of the doubleheader is scheduled for 3:30 p.m. at Kaufman Field with the second game planned to begin at 5:30 p.m.