Women's Track Takes Third At Heps

Although this weekend's Heptagonal Championships in Philadelphia had a number of individual success stories for the Harvard men's and women's track teams, the overall final results were not what either team had hoped for.

The women did manage to avenge their loss to Yale earlier in the season, as their 95 points were just ahead of the Bulldogs' 86.

But the Crimson women weren't the only team to avenge its past defeats. For the entire season, Brown and Dartmouth had been looking up at the Crimson, who beat them to win the Indoor Heps in February and at an outdoor tri-meet in April.

This time the Bears and Big Green had the upper hand, as Brown won its second-straight Outdoor Heps with 122 points, and Dartmouth placed second with 103, eight points ahead of the third-place Crimson.

The Harvard men finished eighth out of nine teams with 47 points, just two points back of seventh-place Brown and six points back of sixth-place Dartmouth. The result was an improvement over the team's performance at Indoor Heps, but the result was still well short of pre-season expectations.

Harvard Women

Yesterday's events began in spectacular fashion, as the Crimson women crushed one school record after another. But by the end of the day, the team just did not have enough points to come out ahead.

In the first crucial event of the day, the 4x100 relay, Harvard broke a ten-year old school record with a time of 46.81 seconds. It was enough to edge out the teams from Brown and Yale that had beaten the Crimson relays earlier in the year.

Junior co-captain Brenda Taylor ran on the 4x100 team that broke the record. That would not be the only school record she would beat on the day.

In her next event, the 100-meter high hurdles, she ran a time of 13.71 seconds that was just ahead of her school-record time of 13.73 from the Brown-Dartmouth tri-meet in April.

Taylor ran her third event of the day, the 100-meter sprint, just 40 minutes later. But she showed no signs of wear and tear. She became the first Crimson woman ever to crack the 12-second mark with a 11.97 run, .07 faster than the school record of Meredith Rainey '90.

In between those two stunning performances by Taylor, came a great run by junior Marna Schutte in the 400 meter. Her time of 54.54 seconds was well ahead of her previous personal best, and was nearly two seconds ahead of the competition.

But by mid-afternoon, the day started to turn sour for the two star Crimson runners.

Taylor's fourth event in as many hours was the 400-meter intermediate hurdles, the event for which she had qualified for the Olympic Trials. But Taylor suffered a stunning upset at the hands of Navy senior Joanna Helm, whose time of 58.44 beat Taylor by half a second.

Then in the 200-meter run which immediately followed, Schutte put up a great time of 24.53 seconds. But Brown's Lindsay Taylor, Brenda's sister, was just a little better with a time of 24.44 seconds.

The meet came to a disappointing conclusion for the Crimson with the 4x400 relay. While the event had been a strong one for Harvard in recent Heptagonal meets, the team--which included Taylor running her fifth event of the day--finished only fourth.

In the field events yesterday, junior Dora Gyorffy was a force as usual for Harvard. With victories in the high jump (1.90 meters) and the triple jump (12.99 meters), she earned Outstanding Female Athlete of the Meet honors.

The biggest performance by a Crimson athlete other than Gyorffy, Schutte and Taylor came from freshman Helena Ronner. With a leap of 5.98 meters, she placed second in the long jump.

But that was the only other top-four performance the team would get. The Harvard throwers and distance runners only managed seven points between them in nine events, and no one other than Schutte and Taylor could score in the sprints.

Senior Kathryn Moynihan was the only distance runner to place. Among the throwers freshmen Jill Kornetsky, Donielle Colich and sophomore Natalie Grant each managed to place in the top six for the Crimson.

Harvard Men

Juniors Chris Clever, John Kraay, and Arthur Fergusson have been the men's three most consistent and reliable athletes all season. Facing the pressure of the biggest meet of the season, each put together a season-best performance on Saturday to get the Crimson off to a solid start.

Clever successfully defended his league title in the javelin. Despite the graduation of last year's runner-up to Clever, Princeton's Rob Manning, Clever still faced tough competition from another Tiger, the much-improved sophomore Liam Morton.

But Clever stepped up his performance just enough to pull off the victory. He won the event with a throw of 221' that beat Morton by just half a foot. The throw was the closest Clever had been all season to his school-record throw of 228' from last year's Heps.

In the shot put, Princeton junior Scott Denbo was heavily favored to defend his title, so the event essentially became a battle for second.

Kraay earned that second-place finish with a throw of 54' that eclipsed his season best by a foot. The big throw was almost a three-foot improvement from his effort at last year's Heps.

Fergusson placed second in the triple jump with a leap of 15.57 meters. While the triple jump may be his best event, he proved himself in the long jump this weekend. Fergusson cracked the seven-meter mark for the first time this season, with a leap of 7.20 meters that earned him second place.

Senior David Martin was the top distance runner with a fourth place finish in the 3000-meter steeplechase.

Captain Darren Dinneen placed a solid third in the 800-meter with a time of 1:48:45. Sophomores Nnamdi Okike and Kobie Fuller earned sixth-place finishes in the 800 and 400, respectively, to close out the Crimson scoring.