SEASON RECAP: Cross Country

All’s well that begins—and ends—well.

That’s the positive take on the Harvard cross country team’s season this past fall. After opening before the start of school on Sept. 11 with a second-place finish at the New Hampshire Invitational, the Crimson seemed to lose its pace until it took 11th at the NCAA Regionals.

In the season’s first race, senior Alasdair McLean-Foreman began his final season at Harvard with a victory, taking the New Hampshire Invitational in 24:56.71. Captain Reed Bienvenu followed him up in fourth, and the outlook was bright for a Crimson team that looked to mix veteran leadership with an influx of young talent.

On the women’s side of the meet, Harvard took fifth on the back of senior Lindsey Yourman’s 11th-place and junior Laura Maludzinski’s 14th-place finishes.

The team next traveled down to New York to compete in the Iona Meet of Champions. With a few runners injured or resting for the following week’s Harvard-Yale race, the Crimson only managed sixth, but got another strong effort from Bienvenu. His 12th-place finish was by far the best for Harvard, and coupled with his performance at New Hampshire, looked to be a promising and somewhat surprising start to his last season with the Crimson.

Freshman Lindsey Scherf also began her stunning season by taking fourth and pacing the Crimson to a fifth-place team finish in the women’s side of the meet.

The next week brought only further disappointment for the team, as both squads fell to Yale, with the women also losing to Princeton in a three-way dual meet.

Scherf continued to impress with a second-place finish at the three-way meet, while Bienvenu again led the Crimson men with a third-place finish.

Freshman Christopher Green also began to make noise in his first season, taking sixth at the meet.

After a few warm-up meets—the New England Championships and the NCAA Pre-Nationals—both teams faced the Heptagonal Championships on Oct. 29th.

Unfortunately for Harvard, neither team could muster much of an effort at the season’s most important meet. The men finished eighth while the women took sixth out of the field of eight Ivy League teams.

Scherf and Bienvenu were again the best two runners for the Crimson at Heptagonals, as the former took sixth with a time of 17:25.5—just 13 seconds behind the winner—and the latter came in 11th at 25:05.9.

McLean-Foreman was back from his season-long, nagging calf injury for the men, but could only muster a 23rd-place finish after taking second last year at the same meet.

“This past weekend was a huge disappointment for the men’s cross country team,” Bienvenu said after the meet. “We had a lot of talent on our team this year and were looking to do much better in the Ivy League. However, a number of different things went badly and hurt our team performance.”

Columbia won both sides of the event.

In the season’s final meet, however, both teams approached redemption. The men took 11th out of 37 teams and the women finished eighth at the NCAA Regional meet.

For the men, Bienvenu finished his cross country career with one of his best races, crossing the line 26th in a field of 229 runners, while the Crimson’s next-best runners, sophomores Kevin Lyons and Sean Barrett, came through in 64th and 65th, respectively.

The women were paced by Scherf, who took seventh, and Maludzinski, who was 32nd.

“I’m so happy to have her on the team,” Maludzinski said of Scherf.

“She has a great attitude, and is fearless when it comes to taking out a race and pouring 110 percent onto the course,” Maludzinski added.

Next year, the women’s team will return both its top stars in pursuit of an Ivy championship.

—Staff writer Gabriel M. Velez can be reached at gmvelez@fas.harvard.edu.