Crimson-Eli Track Teams Take on Oxbridge Squads

A tradition. at long last, became coeducational Saturday at the 28th biennial Harvard/Yale-Oxford/Cambridge track meet in New Haven, as combined women's teams met alongside their male counterparts for the first time in the history of the event.

Amid the pomp and circumstance of an Olympic-like parade around the Yale track and a post-meet banquet, a combined Crimson and Eli women's squad competed against a partial strength Oxbridge team of nine women in an abbreviated and unscored nine-event matchup.

The two combined men's teams ran a complete schedule of 19 events--17 of them scored in the overall standings--which the Harvard. Yale team won by a 10-7 score.

In the men's meet. which Crimson coach Bill McCurdy said was one more of camaraderie than competition. the Harvard contingent accounted for every one of the american squad's points, which were awarded only for first place in each event.

The thinclads achieved this despite a lengthy list of injured team members, including co-captains Marc Chapus and John Murphy. along with stalwarts Adam Dixon and Ryan Lamppa.

The women's meet was a very different story. with Oxbridge winning seven of the nine events. Boasting six world-class sprinters and hurdlers on the team. the English easily captured the 200-meter, 400-meter, 100-meter hurdles, 400-meter hurdles and the two sprint relays, and then finished off the afternoon by edging Harvard's Kim Johnson in the shotput.

The Crimson, however, again contributed the only two American women's victories. with Darlene Beckford copping the 800 in 2:11--four seconds off her Harvard record--and Mary Herlihy winning the mile in 4:58. For Herlihy, the victory represents a propitious omen since it came in her first outdoor race after a one-year layoff.

"The time was okay." Herlihy said yesterday. "The track was cinder so it might have been better on a different track. But I really didn't expect to be running this well so early in the season."

The outstanding thinclad performance of the afternoon ironically came in the men's hammer throw--one of the two events that traditionally is not calculated into the overall standings. On his first throw of the season. Crimson hurler Colin Bell chalked up a loss of 58.56 meters. That mark eclipsed the nearest competitor by a full six meters and qualified Bell for the nationals and the IC4As.

Though Bell's performance did not yield the American team another point, Bell was compensated for his effort when he was awarded the Boal Hammer Award. The award, which was first given two years ago, is named in honor of Ayers Boal '00. the first winner of the event in the trans-Atlantic competition.

Afterwards, the teams feasted together at a banquet, and with the kind of ceremony that properly surrounds storybook competition, drank toasts to the rulers of each other's countries.