BRIEF: Record Breaking Performances for Track at IC4A/ECAC Championships

The Harvard track and field team set a number of personal bests and Ivy League records at the IC4A/ECAC Championships, hosted Saturday and Sunday at Boston University. Only 12 Harvard athletes were chosen to compete at the event, which featured athletes from more than 40 schools across the region.

On the men’s side, the meet was highlighted by a record-breaking performance from freshman Myles Marshall, who scored the top time in the event preliminaries by finishing the 500-meter dash in 1:01.63 seconds. Marshall did not compete in the event finals.

Marshall’s mark is the fastest time in the country this year—more than four-tenths of a second quicker than the second-fastest time—and is also a personal and Harvard-best. His run would have claimed first at the Ivy championships last weekend by more than a second.

Sophomore Ben Huffman also set a personal best in the 3000-meter run with a time of 8:13.62, good for sixth place out of 24 competitors.

The women’s side experienced similar success, claiming a trio of silver medals in the 1000-meter run, 400-meter dash, and pole vault. On the basis of those performances, the women’s Harvard squad scored an 11th place finish out of 44 teams despite fielding only four athletes who competed in event finals.

Senior Paige Kouba set a new Ivy-League record and personal best in the 1000 meters on her way to a second-place finish. Kouba completed the race in 2:44.76 seconds, roughly seven-tenths of a second faster than the previous Ivy record of 2:45.42 seconds.

Senior Autumne Franklin, fresh off a victory at the Ivy League championships, beat her personal record in the 400 meters twice, first by running a 53.64 in the preliminaries and one-upping that with a time of 53.03 seconds in the finals—nearly nine-tenths of a second faster than her old record before the meet.

Franklin’s finals time represents the second fastest in Harvard history—behind only a 52.96 mark, run back in 1990 by two-time Olympian Meredith Rainey—and was more than a second and a half faster than Franklin’s winning time last weekend at the Ivy champs.

Elsewhere, junior pole-vaulter Marlee Sabatino scored a second place finish behind a vault of 12’7.5”, capping off a successful meet for the Harvard field squad.

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