Seniors Lead Hot Start

Hosting the first of its five home meets at Gordon Track on Saturday, the Crimson continued its solid start to the indoor track and field season on the backs of strong performances in the Harvard Open, the team’s largest home contest this season.

“We have a great schedule this year,” Harvard coach Jason Saretsky said. “These [home meets] should be important for us, and with the support of the Harvard community, they should be big meets, especially once February rolls around [for the Heptagonal Championships].”

Co-captain Becky Christensen wasted no time automatically qualifying for the NCAA Championships with a personal-best 1.85-meter jump. Despite taking a short approach—seven steps instead of the usual 10—the jump earned her a victory in the high jump.

“It felt really good,” Christensen said. “I’ve never really taken full advantage of my full approach, so for me it wasn’t really a surprise for me to do well with just seven steps. But hopefully I can work on using my full approach more this season to get higher jumps.”

Senior Brittan Smith finished a very competitive women’s 60-meter dash in fourth place, registering a time of 7.93 in the finals, more than a tenth of a second faster than her preliminary run.

In the women’s 60-meter hurdles, senior Shannon Flahive and freshman Christine Reed finished third and seventh, respectively, with times of 9.12 and 9.59.

Flahive also tallied a second-place finish in the 200-meter dash, with classmate Favia Merritt close behind in third. Flahive’s 25.79 finish was just .12 seconds behind Greater Boston Track Club’s Josette Pierre-Louis, and Merritt came in at 25.89.

Freshman Shannon Conway finished the women’s 400-meter dash in second place with a time of 58.20.

All four Crimson runners competing in the women’s one-mile run finished in the top 15. Seniors Aishlinn O’Callaghan and Jan Ng and freshman Meg Looney held the fifth, sixth, and seventh spots, respectively, all finishing within a minute of each other. Sophomore Meredith MacGregor finished 12th.

“The girls performed extremely well, especially for early on in the season,” Saretsky said.

On the men’s side, freshman John Dingus has already begun to make a name for himself in his brief collegiate career, claiming first place in his first collegiate 500-meter dash by over a full second with a time of 1:05.18. The win earned him an IC4A-qualification.

Sophomore John Fahnenstiel and freshman Chuma Ogunwole met the preliminary qualifier mark in the men’s 60-meter dash, but failed to finish in the top 10 in the finals race, logging times of 7.24 and 7.33, respectively.

The Crimson’s 4x400 meter relay teams continued to put up impressive performances. The women’s A team blew past the competition with a time of 4:00.00, and Hartford beat the B team by just 0.6 seconds, settling for third place with a time of 4:06.86. The men’s team did just as well, finishing second behind University of Massachusetts-Lowell’s A team with a time of 3:24.92.

In the field events, senior Elissa Reidy leaped 11.05 meters on her way to second place in the triple jump, while classmate Dara Wilson came in at 12th with a jump of 10.18.

Junior Jonathan Brito tied for 10th place in the high jump with 1.85 meters, while sophomore Sean Gil slid into third in the pole vault with a vault of 4.55 meters.

Four Harvard men competed in the men’s weight throw, as volunteer coach Chris Bryce threw for a first-place 19.53 meters, men’s co-captain Neville Irani a second-place 17.39 meters, sophomore Eric Clayman a sixth-place 15.78 meters, and junior Jack Brady a seventh-place 14.88 meters.

“This meet was a great indication for the beginning of the season,” Saretsky said. “We got what we wanted out of the meet, and we performed very well for what we expected. It’s a sign of good things to come.”