Harvard Finishes 9th in IC4A's, Avenges Heptagonal Loss to Navy

Harvard's cross-country varsity beat everyone in the Ivy League and Navy as well in the IC4A championship race at Van Cortlandt park in the Bronx yesterday.

Dave Allen was the first Harvard harrier across the line in a somewhat disappointing 30th place. But the depth of the Crimson squad boosted it to a ninth place finish in the team standings. Navy, who beat Harvard in the Heps earlier this month, came in tenth.

Eamon O'Reilly of Georgetown could have crawled the last 50 yards and still led the huge pack. He shaved 17.6 seconds off the meet record, with a five-mile time of 24:24.2. Two hundred yards behind in second was Charles Messenger of Villanova. Messenger was last year's freshman champion.

Larry Furnell of St. John's, the pre-race favorite, ran seventh. About a mile into the race he fell down in the middle of a crowd and lost valuable time.

Georgetown First

Georgetown, Notre Dame, and Army finished one-two-three in the varsity team standings with Michigan State a surprissingly poor sixth. For Georgetown it was two cross-country championships in a row, even though their star harrier, Joe Lynch, has graduated. Lynch was the record holder until O'Reilly put on his big show.

In the three-mile freshman run, Cornell's Gordon McKusick also set a new mark. His time of 14:46 was 12 seconds better than Messenger's year-old standard. Three other runners were clocked in better-than-record time. The best Harvard could do in that race was Doug Hardin's 35th place. The team panted into 11th place on the same kind of depth the varsity boasts. But it wasn't enough for Ivy League honors, which went to Cornell.

For the second consecutive year, Villanova won the university division freshman race. It wasn't even close for team honors, as five of the first nine finishers were Villanova freshmen.

The brightest feature of the day for Harvard was the team showing. In the Heps, the order of finish was Army-Navy-Harvard, and the Crimson harriers avenged half that defeat yesterday. Harvard also continued its domination of the Ivy League.

Eleventh place in the freshman contest was good enough to conquer the Brown and Providence freshman squads. Both teams had defeated Harvard in freshman meets earlier this year.

A Strong 94th

Sixteen seconds behind Allen, Harvard's Jim Baker ran 40th in 26:16. Ran Langenbach was 58th in 26:41, and George Starkus of Boston University, winner of the Greater Boston Championships, was two slots and two seconds behind Langenbach. Jon Chaffee was 78th in 27:09. Bob Stempson was 81st, and Joe Ryan ran 84th. Dick Howe was the last Harvard runner in 94th. A total of 159 runners crossed the finish line.

Walt Hewlett, who chased Lynch across the line in the IC4A's last year, couldn't run yesterday because of a slow-healing muscle strain.