High Expectations Not Realized by W. Thinclads

Who could've blamed Harvard's women's cross country team for being a little bit giddy at the start of the fall?

At that time, the future looked as bright as it ever had. The Crimson (25-8 overall, 2-2 Ivy) had lost only one runner from a 1993 team which had finished second at the Heptagonals behind a Cornell team that would go on to finish fourth at the NCAA championships. What's more, the team seemed to have a number of solid freshman coming in to provide depth to a strong leadership corps of juniors and seniors.

The team members were confident, and as they prepared for the season, visions of national ranking danced in their heads.

"We were so excited going into the year," senior Alais Griffin says. "We were extremely tight, and we thought that the sky was the limit."

"Everyone was extremely optimistic," senior Megan Gritschel says. "We were sure that it would be a great year."

Such high hopes were not to be fulfilled, however. In a cruel reversal of fortune from the previous season, when the squad surprised all, the team had a rough go of it throughout the season, exemplified in its seventh-place finish out of nine teams at the Heptagonals.

"It was really disappointing because I think that we had some incredible expectations going into the year," Griffin said. "In the end, we didn't do as well as we had hoped, particularly at Heps."

What made the team's disappointment all the greater was that its inability to fulfill expectations was not a cause of collective malaise so much as a series of bizarre incidents which seemed to be taken from a foul episode of the 60's comic mini-series "Bewitched."

First, even before the race of the year, Griffin went down with an acute case of tendinitis, a malady that would plague her throughout the year.

After that, a flood of weird injuries seemed to hamper the team--from Gritschel's back sprain, sustained early in the season, to number-one runner karen Goetz' ankle sprain, sustained the night before the Heptagonals when she tripped over a rock on practice jog.

At any given meet during the season, there was at least one person--often more-either out with an injury or just coming back from an injury and thus a bit out of shape.

"It was really odd, but sad," Griffin says. "We were never completely healthy, and we rarely performed as well as I think we could have."

Despite the number of early season injuries, however, Harvard still fared well in early matches.

In its first meet of the season, it finished second out of 15 teams at the Fordham Invitational, perhaps its best meet of the year team-wise.

It fell off slightly in the second meet, garnering a disappointing seventh-place finish out of 12 teams at the Boston College Invitational, but then took convincing wins in dual action against Brown, 22-37, and Northeastern, 15-50, before finishing first in the five-team Greater Boston Championships.

After that, the team beat a poor Yale team, 19-44, before losing to Princeton, a team it had soundly trounced the year before, 28-29.

While those performances--particularly the Princeton loss--were, disappointing, they paled in comparison to the Heptagonals performance October 29.

Heptagonals is traditionally considered to be the biggest team meet of the season for the Crimson. It features all eight of the Ivy League teams plus Navy, and is seen as the equivalent of a league championship meet.

Harvard went into this year's meet as it did the entire season--with high hopes--and came out of the experience like a movie audience that has just seen Ishtar. Rather than garnering the upset win over Cornell it had dreamed of, it ended up with a seventh-place finish, it lowest in five years.

"That was so disappointing," Griffin says. "It was the biggest meet of the year, and we put forth our worst performance. That really hurt."

Two weekends later, the Crimson finished up its season with a 16th place finish out of 28 teams at Easterns, a disappointing end to a disappointing season.

"It was rough and it was hard, but I guess we can take consolation in the fact that stayed together through it all," Griffin says. "We didn't get down on each other, we continually supported each other throughout the year, and that's what's really important. That fact can only help the team in the future."

WOMEN'S CROSS COUNRTY

Record: 25-8

Ivy League: 2-2

Key Players: Karen Goetze, Meredith Fitzgerald, Kelly Benke

Seniors: Megan Fritschel, Alais Griffin, Kathleen McGovern