Women First, Men Take Third at GBC's

Capitalizing on four outstanding efforts from Meredith Rainey, the Harvard women's indoor track team raced to a first place finish at the 1988 Greater Boston Championships held Friday and Saturday at the Gordon Track Facility.

Meanwhile, the men's team--behind Brian Cann and James Russell--earned a scrappy third place finish in the meet.

The two-day meet pitted seven Boston area teams together in midseason competition.

"The Boston teams are a lot closer in ability this year," Harvard Coach Frank Haggerty said. "We have the most wide open field since the early sixties."

In the women's division, Rainey captured a first place finish in the 440-yd. run and earned a second place in the 220. Rainey, who just began track last year but is in strong contention for the Nationals this year, also ran legs in two Harvard relays.

Several runners besides the sophomore standout won points in multiple events for the Crimson. Beth Pfefferie won the 600-yd. run and was on the winning relay team, while Tina Lount was first in the 1,000-yd. run with a time of 2:42:44 and second in the mile with a time of 4:58:01.

Harvard, which has never before been undefeated this late in the season, relied on its overall depth to win the meet by such a substantial margin. The Crimson placed in almost every event and picked up several points from athletes finishing behind the top three.

Harvard Co-Captain Kathy Toner cited the whole team effort over the individual achievements. "We were able to win by so much because we won a lot of points from fifth place finishes," she said. "People tend to overlook the lower places but we really count on them to add up for us."

In the men's division, five-time defending champion Northeastern captured another victory with a score of 80 points. Boston College finished a close second with 74, followed by Harvard with 58.5, B.U. with 38.5, M.I.T. 31, Tufts 15 and Brandeis closing out the field with 13.