Yesterday the Harvard softball team clinched its second Ivy title in three years and earned a return trip to the NCAA Tournament. When the NCAA Regionals begin on May 18th, the Crimson will be playing alongside the top competition in the nation.

With an 18-19 overall record, the Crimson should expect a low seed in one of the six-team NCAA Regionals. Each of the eight regional brackets plays a double-elimination tournament with the winner moving on to the College World Series.

Harvard's destination and potential next victims will be determined when pairings are made on May 14th.

Earlier in the year, Harvard took on nationally ranked competition in softball tournaments at Georgia and Virginia Tech. The Crimson started the season with a 4-15 record against the tough opposition.

But any NCAA opponent that chooses to look past Harvard because of that dismal start will be in for a big surprise.

"We're probably not gong to be a high seed, so we'll be going up against a tough team," Harvard Coach Jenny Allard said. "What more could you ask for? We'll be ready."

The early games of the season are an unfair basis of comparison between the Crimson and its national competition.

The terrible New England weather deserves part of the blame for Harvard's poor start. No team in the Northeast can find suitable outdoor playing conditions in March, so the softball season starts much later in this part of the country.

The teams Harvard faced down in Georgia and Virginia had played as many as 20 games more than the Crimson at that point. Harvard was still working the rust out of its system.

There is no question that the Crimson has improved since then.

"We're a much better team than we were in early March," Allard said. "I think they're all playing together. They're stepping up. They're doing a good job."

Even though playing such difficult competition so early in the year may make the Crimson's record look ugly, the lessons learned from those early- season tournaments improve Harvard's chances in the NCAA Regionals.

"I think the types of teams we faced early on, we'll face in the regionals," Allard said.

Because of the early season experience, any chance of the Crimson players being intimidated by the opponents they may play has been greatly reduced. After all, how intimidating can a game against top-ranked Northeast team Notre Dame (37-12) be when Harvard has already played Fresno State (44-11), the 1998 national champion?

Cornell--last year's Ivy champion--fared poorly in the NCAA Regionals. The Big Red failed to evade softball's eight-run mercy rule in either of its games, losing 8-0 to top seed Texas and 9-1 to fifth seed Michigan State.