Track and Field Places Second at HYP Meet

Led by strong performances from freshman Gabby Thomas and sophomore Jay Hebert, the Harvard track and field teams set a number of personal records at the annual HYP meet this weekend. Both the men’s and women’s teams finished in second place behind Princeton.

In a trend that is starting to feel familiar, Thomas led the way for the Crimson female squad, with first-place finishes in the triple jump and the 60 meter dash. Thomas’s collegiate career is off to a blazing start: last weekend, she set a personal best in the 200 meter dash—good for first overall among all freshman sprinters in the nation—and now has won at least one race in every meet of the year so far.

Thomas’s time of 7.51 seconds in the 60 meter barely edged out the 7.56 second dash run by teammate and fellow freshman Ngozi Musa, who would go on to claim victory in the 200 meter with a personal best of 24.80 seconds.

“The freshmen [this year] are really awesome, which kind of just shows the caliber of team that Harvard has,” junior hurdler Jade Miller said. “We’re able to recruit good girls who could have gone to a lot of other top-tier track schools.”

Miller herself set a personal best in the 400 meter dash, with her time of 54.80 seconds good enough for second only behind teammate Autumne Franklin—who ran a 54.39, also a personal best. But the personal records didn’t stop there: sophomore Marlee Sabatino also cleared a career-high 12’9.5” in the pole vault to claim second.

“I was really happy with how the meet went for me,” Sabatino said. “I had a lot of problems in warm-ups and was very unsure about how I was going to compete that day, but ended up turning it around…. I’m still hoping to jump a lot higher.”

Elsewhere, junior All-American Nikki Okwelogu dominated the shot put with a season-best 54’8.75”—a full 14 feet better than second place, and a mark that would have earned her third in the men’s shot put. Junior Jackie Modesett also scored a victory in the 60 meter hurdles.

The men’s squad was led by sophomore Jay Hebert, who set a personal record in the 60 meter hurdle with a time of 8.16 seconds, a mark good for second all-time in the Crimson record books.

“It definitely surprised me too,” Hebert said. “The conditions out there weren’t the best, so to go out and drop a personal record made me feel really good and made me think about what I could do if I did have perfect conditions.”

The conditions didn’t stop freshman Myles Marshall from claiming a personal high of 1:03.34 in the 500 meter dash, good for second at the meet and third all-time in Harvard history. The men’s squad also scored second in four other events, including two season-bests by senior Malcolm Mason Rodriguez in the long jump and triple jump.

Overall, the men’s team finished a considerable margin behind Princeton in the standings, with 35 points to Princeton’s 112, but is confident in its ability to improve on last year’s 5th place finish in the Ivy Championships.

“[Physically], we just need to get a lot of the people that we have healthy, because we have a lot of talent that’s injured and hasn’t run this year so far,” Hebert said. “As far as team mentality though, we’re probably in a better spot than we were last year.”

To the team, though, HYP is less about winning and more about preparing for the Ivy Championships come February.

–Staff writer Phillip Yu can be reached at phillipyu@college.harvard.edu.