Cross Country Team Finishes 23rd in NCAAs

"I feel that I'm probably the greatest coach in any legal sport," cross-country coach Bill McCurdy (who else?) once quipped. McCurdy's greatness, perhaps more than anything else, lies in his originality.

That quality apparently rubbed off on this fall's cross-country squad, which finished a standout season at Denton, Texas, yesterday in the NCAA meet.

Any team that wins the IC4As after a dismal season the year before has to be a little original, right? Well, they are, and they've done it with a combination of hard work and a light, McCurdian attitude.

The players are even beginning to sound like McCurdy. Asked what spurred the team to an unexpected success Saturday afternoon, hirsute-faced captain Jeff Campbell dead-panned: "The bearded look on the captain."

The growth of the beard and the team's practice both began in early September at the Grotonwood training camp.

"We'd always run camp with a three-loop routine," sophomore Pete Fitzsimmons, an All-Ivy performer last year, said Saturday. "This year, we ran five. Every day we ran 17 miles before eight o'clock."

As if the routine were not hard enough, unheralded sophomore Ed Sheehan started doing greyhound imitations on the long-distance runs.

"He was out there and we were chasing him all the time," Fitzsimmons said.

Even the mild-mannered Fitzsimmons, though, has been touched by some of the McCurdy blarney. Reflecting on the 23-day training period, Fitzsimmons quipped, "We knew that if we got through the camp we'd be either dead or the IC4A champs."

If the first few meets were any indication, the Crimson was leaning toward the grave. The harriers turned in only average performances in the first few meets on the schedule.

"At that point," Campbell said, "we'd lost two but I felt encouraged." The reason? "We had more guys than last year, and we were all in better shape."

"And," Fitzsimmons added, "we had a better attitude." The attitude, perhaps more than the hard work, was the key, and it came from individuals. The cast of originals, briefly:

--Campbell, Fitzsimmons and Sheehan, but you know about them.

--Stein Rafto, who ran a strong 11th in the IC4A meet. "Stein is incredibly looser," Fitzsimmons said. "Last year, he psyched himself up too much."

--Freshman Reed Eichner. In the words of captain Campbell: "The last good runner to come out of Kansas was Jim Ryun, and he fell down in the Olympics." But seriously, folks... Campbell continued: "Eichner's incredibly relaxed about running--almost emotionless--and he's in great condition. He's just phenomenal."

--Rock Moulton, Mark Meyer, Thad McNulty--and the list goes on.

The victories, as everyone knows by now, started to come, and though the team finished low in yesterday's NCAA meet, the season has to go down as an exceptionally strong one.

"We had everybody working together all the time," Campbell said, summing up the season. "That made any responsibility I had as captain easier."

Fitzsimmons chimed in, "Campbell is the greatest captain in any legal sport. That's an original quote."

"It's not original at all," countered Campbell, smiling from beneath his beard.

The quote, perhaps was not all that original. The 1976 Harvard cross-country team, on the other hand, was.

The Harvard cross country team closed out a highly successful season with a respectable 23rd place finish in the National Collegiate Athletic Association cross country finals in Denton, Texas, yesterday.

The team title went to Texas-El Paso, a perennial favorite, which had four of its seven runners place in the top 25 finishers for a total team score of 62 points.

Kenyan-born Henry Rono of Washington State grabbed individual honors in the race, pulling in first at 28:06, just ten seconds ahead of teammate Samson Kimombwa, also of Kenya. Third place went to defending champion Craig Virgin of Illinois, who came in at 28:36.

Providence College, well-rested after declining an option to run in the IC4As, was the top finishing eastern squad, coming in ninth out of the 34-team field with 371 total team points.

The Harvard team, which earned its slot in yesterday's race by sweeping last Monday's IC4As in New York, ran extremely well. Despite the white-hot pace and the unusually long and flat 10,000 meter course, most of the Crimson finishes were strong.

Jeff Campbell capped his last race for Harvard as the first Crimson finisher, placing 62nd in the race at a time of 29:47. Teammate Stein Rafto followed seven seconds later at 104, and Peter Fitzsimmons came in third for Harvard, 141st in the race at 30:20.

The first mile of the race was extremely competitive, as Crimson harrier Thad McNulty registered a blazing 2:07 half-mile. Senior captain Campbell shot past the mile mark at 4:24, just seven seconds behind the leaders. The rest of the team was not far behind, as Rafto ran for a strong 4:29 first mile, followed only seconds later by teammates Pete Fitzsimmons and Reed Eichner.

After the mile mark the top teams began to show their mettle, as the top three Washington runners and Illinois' Virgin began to pull away from the rest and trade the lead among themselves.

At this point the race began to dissolve into small knots of runners due to the swiftness of the pace, making it difficult for the Crimson to pass others and challenge the leaders.

The second half of the race was marked by a strong Oregon upsurge and an increasingly strong pace. Oregon went on to take second place with 117 team points followed at a comfortable distance by third place Washington State with 179 points.

Despite the 23rd place finish, the Crimson team members were satisfied with the results of the meet. "We ran a really strong race all the way," Campbell said. "We didn't fall apart at all--it was a solid performance."

"Although there were a few things that hampered us, such as the extremely fast pace and the difficulty we had in passing other runners, it was a good experience for us to run in that kind of race," Campbell added.

The order of finish was made sweeter for the Harvard team by the fact that it had surpassed Dartmouth, which finished 32nd, and Princeton, which finished 28th--two teams that had beaten the Crimson squad earlier in the season.

Next year holds even more promise for the team. Only one member of the team--Campbell--is graduating, and the remainder consists mostly of freshmen and sophomores.