Track Finds Tough Hurdle at Easterns

Oh, that perpetual dilemma of Harvard men's and women's track.

Easterns or Heptagonals? Heptagonals or Easterns?

Generally, the track athlete's body can only hit one emotional high in a seven-day span, So after several rousing performances in Harvard's own Gordon Track Center-the women finishing second overall, the men capturing individual honors in the 1000 meters and the 55 meter dash-one week before the penultimate event of the collegiate track and field season, it was hardly a surprise that Sunday's respective ventures outside the Ivy League met with, well...

Let's just say that nobody could have been mistaken for Eamonn Coughlan.

Actually, sophomore Drain Shearer came closest to individual honors for the men in his and Coughlan's best event, the mile (the latter became the first of the over-40 set to break the four-minute mile two weekends ago just after the Hoptagonals), at the IC4A Championships.

Those would be the Inter-Collegiate Association of American Amateur Athletics Championships (that'll twist your tongue), held Saturday and Sunday at Princeton.

Shearer set a personal best of 4:08.63 in the preliminary heats, and as late as the seventh (of eight) lap of the final, he was still in third place, when....

"I got my feet tripped up from behind," he said. "I fell, and two others fell behind me. At least I was able to get up in time and finish the race, but after thinking how awesome my heat was and how really psyched I was, it was kinda disappointing."

Quite a three-car pileup, and he can show the scars to prove it. He wound up finishing six seconds behind the eventual winner at 4:13.

Shearer was one of only two Harvard men to make it to the finals of an event at the IC4A's. Esan Simon placed eight in the 55 meter hurdles.

For the women, the results at the Eastern Championships were about the same. Alexia Cruz failed to qualify for the finals of the long jump, and freshman Ailey Penningroth also found that event to be her Achilles' heel in the pentathlon, fouling on her first two attempts and forcing her to jump conservatively on her last attempt.

Penningroth finished "well back," in her own words.

She understands, though, that it "is hard to come off of the [Heptagonals] and put in a good performance [at the Easterns]. That's where all the emotion was for us, and a lot of us even opted not to go to Easterns.

"The body just can't handle all that competition."