Women's Track and Field Wins Fourth Straight Ivy Championship, Men Come in Fifth

­It must feel good to be a senior on the Harvard women’s track and field team after the action this past Saturday and Sunday.

This weekend, the Harvard women brought home their fourth straight Ivy Championship—capping off an undefeated indoor Ivy career for the team’s seniors. Meanwhile, the men tied their result from last year by rallying near the close of the meet to a fifth-place finish.

The women’s meet was highlighted by yet another dominant performance from freshman Gabby Thomas, who claimed victory in the long jump, 60-meter dash, 200-meter dash, and 4x400 meter relay. Thomas, in her first year, already holds the Ivy League records in the 60-meter dash, 200-meter dash, and the 4x400 relay.

“[Gabby] is super focused, but also is really able to enjoy [racing],” junior Jade Miller said. “I couldn’t imagine being in all the events she was in as a freshman.”

Fellow freshman Ngozi Musa, who set the top time in the prelims, finished second in the 60-meter dash final—a mere 0.03 seconds off Thomas’s winning time. Musa and Thomas have been going back and forth all season, and now own the two top times in Ivy League history.

The competition between Musa and Thomas is eerily reminiscent of the contest the previous few seasons between recently graduated Danielle Barbian ’15 and Ashley Collinsworth ’15, who finished one-two at the 60-meter dash in the two consecutive Ivy championships before this one.

Barbian and Collinsworth also previously owned the two fastest times in Ivy history, before Thomas and Musa claimed those records for themselves.

“It’s funny—like we’re just replacing [Ashley and Danielle] at the same distance,” Miller said. “[Gabby and Ngozi] compete against one another in practice and meets, but what’s really awesome is that they’re able to hug it out afterwards.”

Elsewhere, the Crimson swept the podium in the women’s 60-meter hurdles, with senior Autumne Franklin, Miller, and junior Jackie Modesett coming in first, second, and third, respectively. Miller’s time of 8.51 seconds was a personal best.

“It was really awesome to see [the sweep] happen,” Miller said. “We all went out today and did what we had to do, and that was a really awesome feeling.”

Franklin, who was named the meet’s most outstanding track athlete, also scored the gold in the 400-meter dash, beating out last year’s champion Udeme Akpaete of Cornell by almost eight-tenths of a second.

In the women’s shot put, junior two-time defending Ivy champion Nikki Okwelogu continued her dominance with a winning throw of 55’10”—almost 10 feet better than the second place throw.

Okwelogu already holds the Ivy record in the shot put, and her throw would have earned her fifth on the men’s side.

The Crimson women also claimed victory in the distance medley relay and scored a plethora of top four finishes in other events, including the mile run and 500-meter dash.

On the men’s side, Harvard landed a fifth-place finish with a total of 46 points.

“Going in, we were looking to get top four,” junior Brandon Price said. “It wasn’t looking too good for us [at the beginning]... However, we were able to rally. It’s not what we were hoping for, but we’re still pretty happy.”

Indeed, Harvard pulled off a victory in the men’s 4x800 meter relay—the second to last event of the meet—which netted ten points for the Crimson, the difference between fifth and seventh place.

The other clutch late performance came in the 5000-meter run, where Price came in big down the stretch with a second place finish.

“I saw that we were in seventh place going into the 5K…. So I just put my head down and grinded it out,” Price said.

The Crimson men also claimed gold in the triple jump, where defending champion Efe Uwaifo jumped 52’3” on the way to a new Harvard record.

Elsewhere, Harvard scored top five performances in a number of different events, including personal bests by sophomore Jay Hebert in the 60-meter hurdles and senior Mark Hill in the heptathlon.

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