Men, Women Harriers Trounce Brown

It's getting a little monotonous. Not only did the Harvard men's cross-country team bump off its fourth straight opponent yesterday in Boston, but for the second straight meet the top five finishers all wore Crimson.

Running on the Franklin Park course, the men's team squashed Brown, 15-49, a few minutes after the Crimson women dumped the Bruins, 24-31, both teams are undefeated. Women's Couch Dennis Cochrane-Fikes was pleased with his team's showing, as Harvard's first five finishers crossed the lines in a 62-second span. "Ideally, you want your top five within 60 seconds," he said after the meet, not appearing too concerned over the extra two seconds. The women harriers were led by Kate Wiley in 17:30, followed by Kathleen Good and Lois Bronner, though the surprisingly strong Bruins grabbed fourth through seventh.

Cochrane-Fikes said that though "the league is too tight to call, and the championship is up for grabs," Harvard should be right in there, competitive despite standout Jenny Stricker's decision to take a year off.

After blowing out both Penn and Columbia last week, the Crimson went into yesterday's meet confident. Second-year Coach Frank Haggerty used this race as an experiment, which might prove useful against tougher Ivy opponents Dartmouth and Princeton. Haggerty sent his harriers out with instructions to run the first four miles of the 6-2-mile course hard, in an attempt to outdistance their opponents quickly. The strategy worked, as Harvard took the first six, and the eighth through eleventh places, while many Harvard best times.

Harvard was led for the third straight time by sophomore Paul Gompers, in 29:42. Andy Gerkin was second with a time of 30:29, followed in order by Bruce Webber and Peter Jelley in 30:42, Jim McDonald (30:57) and Paul McNulty (30:58). Felix Rippy finished eighth in 31:15, with Paul Kent, John Duffy and Cliff Sheehan behind him.

Haggerty was pleased with his runners' times. "They have been training very hard," he said. "It's very good to get personal bests since we've been working hard for 30 straight days." He promised to build more rest into his runners' training schedule. Co-captain Rippy also felt the harriers need a rest. "We had a hard week, and weren't fresh going into this meet," he said. The Crimson will be fresh when they take on Dartmouth, and Princeton on October 21.

The current Crimson squad is vastly improved over the one that finished fifth in the Heptagonals last year. Led by co-captains McNulty and Rippy, the team has been helped by the return of seniors Webber and Gerkin, both in good shape after spending last year in Europe. And Gompers, an Olympic hopeful, who has recovered from last year's nagging injuries, is a good bet to finish first for Harvard every meet.

The Dartmouth meet should provide an early glimpse of the Crimson's chances in next months NCAA qualifiers, where it will battle Dartmouth for a tournament bid.

THE NOTEBOOK: Brown only avoided a shutout in the man's meet by placing a runner in the seventh position. Harvard had posted 15-50 "shutouts" against its previous two opponents.