Small Roster Hurts W. Track

The Harvard women's track and field team had a bit of a problem.

The Crimson needed more people. Warm bodies. Intelligent life forms.

Throughout the year, Harvard found itself with smaller teams than its opponents. So, although the squad's top performers were as good if not better than the Crimson's top adversaries, the other teams' bottom seeds continuously racked up points on Harvard's shallow team, especially in meets involving three or more teams.

A good example of this was at the indoor Greater Boston Championship--sort of a track Beanpot--where Harvard finished third behind Northeastern and B.C.--a team the Crimson had beat earlier in a dual meet. The highlight of the meet was a Harvard record-breaking performance by sophomore Karen Goetze, who finished the 500 meters in 1:14.16.

"We started out the season really great with the win against B.C.," Goetze said. "I am kind of disappointed about placing behind them [at GBCs]."

Harvard would then rebound at the Harvard Yale-Princeton triangular in early February. That fall, the women' cross-country team won its H-Y-P for the first time in eight years, and the track and field team kept the string going, blowing out its rivals. The Crimson registered 91 points, while the Tigers and Elis only got 41 and 16, respectively.

That gave Harvard some momentum for the upcoming Heptagonal Championships. It was widely believed that Cornell and Borwn would duke it out for the top two spots of the tournament, and the Big Red and the Bears did finish 1-2. But the it was a blowout for Cornell, earning 128 to Brown's 94.

Harvard came in fourth, which was pretty good considering its lack of depth. The Crimson picked up 84 points--a mere one point behind third-place Penn.

"We ran beyond our expectations," senior co-captain Jennifer Kearney said. "We were hurt as a team a little bit by depth, but we had great individual performances."

After that, the only thing left for the indoor season was to see if Goetze would be all All-American. She was a provisional qualifier at East Tennessee State on March 5-6, and she ended up making the cut. At Nationals, she was clocked at 2:08.99 in the 800 finals, good enough for eighth place and All-American status--though she has dual citizenship with France.

Then came the outdoor season, which essentially was a big case of deja vu. Early on, Harvard finished third in a meet, this time in a triangular with Brown and Dartmouth. The Crimson kicked the Elis' behind (100-45) and finished fourth in the Heptagonals.

The win over Yale was certainly the highlight of the spring. The dual meet was qualifier for the prestigious Harvard-Yale-Oxford-Cambridge meet over the summer, and everyone on the Crimson wants the chance to whip the Brits.

At Heps, Cornell again was the leader, tallying 141 1/3 points. Dartmouth came in second (113), Brown third (95) and Harvard fourth (87). Goetze again shined, as she was Harvard's only individual winner, taking the 800 meters.

The end to the season was at the ECAC Tournament at George Mason, with National berths on the line. However, neither Goetze or any of her teammates made the cut this time around.