Harriers Contained

The Harvard men's cross country team captured fourth place while the women harriers finished third in a record-breaking afternoon Saturday at the Greater Boston Championships held in Franklin Park.

Boston College's Jose Rocha ran a course-record 29:45.3 to win the men's 10,000 meter race, while Boston University's Beth McMacken shattered the women's old 5000-meter mark with her first-place finish of 16:53.9.

BU captured men's team honors with 38 points, followed by BC (54), Northeastern (66), Harvard (74) and Brandeis (104).

Harvard was led by senior Paul Gompers, whose third-place time of 30:06.7 was 1:10 better than his best time and 35 seconds under the previous course record.

"I ran a pretty competitive race, but the competition was such that the top three guys there could be the top three in the nation," explained Gompers, referring to Rocha (the National Catholic champion), BU's Dean Crowe (the sixth-place finisher in last year's nationals) and himself.

The rest of the Harvard team, paced by ninth-place finisher John Oja (31:49.0), also showed improvement in Saturday's competition. Michael Curtis finished 11th with a time of 32:06, followed by freshman Mike Rakov in 24th and Michael Spence in 25th.

"For the first three meets nobody ran close to their potential," said Gompers, "but this weekend the team made immense, immense improvement. We had six people run faster than they did the week before on the same course."

Last weekend Harvard, without Gompers in the lineup, lost to Brown and Northeastern in a tri-meet also held at Franklin Park.

Saturday marked Gompers' return to competition after a two-week layoff. "It was only my second meet because I'm gearing up for nationals which are six weeks away, and you can't peak at the end of the season if you are racing every weekend," he explained.

Gompers also plans to take this week off from competition in preparation for the triangular with Princeton and Yale the following weekend.

For the women, Boston College took the team title with 32 points, trailed by BU (64), Harvard (70), Brandeis (98) and Northeastern (104).

Sophomore Jodi Dushay led the Crimson with her seventh-place finish in 17:47, followed by Katie Toner (11th, 17:56), Toby Warden (13th, 18:02), Captain Alison Keller (19th, 18:36) and freshman Lise Vansen (20th, 18:37).

"It was a great improvement--everyone's time has been improving and BC is one of the top teams on the East Coast, so we weren't suprised by the competition," Keller said.