Women's Track Battles Toronto

The Harvard women's track team had it's final tune-up for next week's Heptagonals this weekend against the University of Toronto.

Toronto provided little opposition for the women in most events. With the majority of events providing little real opposition, it would have been very easy for individuals to sit back and do as little as possible to secure the win. But they were able to motivate themselves and concentrate on winning.

The most exciting race of the day was easily the 1,000-meter. Similar to last week, sophomore Margaret Angell entered the last 200 meters of that race well ahead. Angell had left the field behind early on and was in effect running purely against the clock.

As it turned out, she won that race too. Her time of 2:54.39 was the fastest ever run for the event by a Harvard woman and easily qualified her for the ECAC's in two weeks.

Completing a clean sweep for the Crimson were freshman Margaret Schotte (2:58.63) and sophomore Heather Stround (2:59.16).

Schotte was running this race as a preparation for the longer 3,000-meter next weekend where she hopes to both place and qualify for ECAC's. Her 1,000-meter qualifying time this weekend puts her in a good position to achieve both these goals.

Stroud's performance, her best for Harvard thus far, also qualifies her for the ECAC's and gives her a lot of confidence for next week's championships.

Junior co-captain Alley Penningroth dominated the throwing events once again, winning both the shot (11.29 meters) and the 20-pound weight throw (13.58 meters). Sophomores Jenny Berrien and Alison Goldkamp won the 55-meter hurdles (8.61 seconds) and the 400-meter race (58.23 seconds) respectively.

The 200-meter race was won by freshman Heather Hanson in a fast 25.3 seconds and senior co-captain Amanda Williams won the rarely-run 300-meter race in 39.8 seconds.

Next week at Dartmouth, the pressure will be back on and competition will be a lot stronger. With many more individual victories than usual, the team will travel to Hanover on Friday with plenty of confidence that they know how to win.

The goal for the first day will be to get as many women into Sunday's finals as possible, thereby setting the team up for a chance to go one better than last year when it was beaten by Cornell.