Harriers Cut Down in Woods

The Harvard men's and women's cross country teams got lost in the woods last Friday at the Heptathlon championships.

But there were no bears in this forest.

No barn owls to scare passers-by.

It wasn't even the witching hour.

It was broad daylight in the urban jungle called New York. The harriers were carrying the Crimson torch through a tough, wooded Van Cortlandt Park course.

But they couldn't find their way through fast enough.

"You can be 10 meters behind another runner and you just can't see him," said Harvard Coach Ed Sheehan.

The men, especially, had trouble on Van Cortlandt's paths, as their first runner was only in the 30's in terms of placings at the mile.

Racing Flat

"We just came out really, really flat," said Captain Brian Cann. "If we'd had a good race we would have been fourth or fifth."

As it turned out, the first Crimson runner came in 34th, and the team stumbled home 10th. This leaves nowhere to go but up for the men in their next race, the IC4A's in Bethlehem, Pa. in a couple of weeks.

"It's hard to put a goal on the IC4A's but to beat as many Ivy opponents as possible," Cann said. "It would be a good experience."

"I hope we'll do quite a bit better if we're aggressive," Sheehan said.

The women were ready to return to dominance in the race they had won five times in a row in the first half of the decade.

"We all knew it was a really big race," said Captain Katie Toner. "It all came down to all of us running our best."

But despite all the preparations, it was a lack of aggressiveness at the start of the race that hampered the women's team. Historically, the women have been able to overcome slow starts. But not this time.

"The women won a lot of races by beating people at the end," Sheehan said. "The [opposition] has run aggressively against us and not held on."

"We had to be up front at the first mile," Toner said. "The race was made there."

Briggs and Stratton '87

Once the women fell behind they could not stage a comeback on the difficult course.

"The women ran more aggressively but you can't give one or two seconds away at the mile," Sheehan said.

"You can't expect to mow everyone down at the end," Toner said.

The women are looking forward to the ECAC's to show that their showing last Friday was but a fluke.

"We're the underdogs, but there's the outside shot at making Nationals," Toner said. "The team's ready."

"They should vindicate themselves this weekend," Sheehan said. "They've had a pretty good attitude."

And the right attitude can get you through the woods in a hurry.