Track Teams Come up Lame in All Three Seasons

1996

Sports Statistics

Coach: Frank Haggerty

Key Players: Seniors Ian Carswell and Killian Lonergan; Junior Margaret Angell, Sophomore Margaret Schotte

1997

This was by no means the year for Harvard's men's and women's cross-country, indoor track or track and field teams. Both the men and women lacked depth in all of their seasons and had only a few top runners which consistently placed near the top in their meets.

If there was a bright spot to this subpar season, it was men's indoor and outdoor track and field co-captain Ian Carswell. His outstanding record-breaking performances gave Harvard at least some recognition in the Ivy League.

Cross-country

The annual Harvard-Yale-Princeton (H-Y-P) five-mile cross-country meet was probably the first chance to see where Harvard stood in the Ivy League. The results were discouraging for both the men and women.

The men placed third at the H-Y-P meet with a dismal score of 78, behind first-place finisher Princeton (22) and second-place Yale (34). Out of the top 15 finishers, Harvard only managed a 14th-place finish by sophomore Scott Muoio with a time of 27:16.5.

The women fared a little better than the men at the H-Y-Ps, placing second with 47 points, ahead of Yale's 70 points but well behind first-place Princeton's 19 points. Sophomore Margaret Schotte turned in a third-place finish on the 3.1 mile course with a time of 18:45.6, seven seconds ahead of junior teammate Margaret Angell, who placed sixth in the race.

The biggest event of the cross-country season is the Heptagonal Championships (Heps) in which all of the Ivy League teams compete, along with Navy. The men run a 10,000-meter course and the women run 5,000 meters. The first five Ivy finishers are elected to First Team All-Ivy and the second five are named to the Second Team All-Ivy.

Dartmouth blew away the competition on the women's side as it took the top three finishes and won the Heps title. Princeton followed close behind and Brown took third. The defending Heps champion, Dartmouth's Maribel Sanchez, was the winner with the fastest Heps time this decade, a scorching 17:28.0.

The Harvard women still hold he most Heps titles with five, but were not even close to adding another title to their bounty this year as they earned fifth place in the nine team field.

Schotte proved once again that she is Harvard's top cross-country runner with a team best 18:05.7, good enough for eighth place. Schotte was the only Harvard runner to make an All-Ivy team.

The Harvard men continued to show signs of weakness at the Heps. The men turned in an abysmal last-place finish at Heps, as no Harvard runner was among the top 12 finishers. Navy won the Heps title for the first time since 1992 and was followed by second-place Princeton and third-place Brown.

Indoor Track

If the fall season was a disappointment for the men and mediocre for the women, these roles were reversed during the winter indoor track season.

Carswell and senior Killian Lonergan gave the Crimson fans something to cheer about on the men's teams. Unfortunately, this dynamic roommate duo was not able to lift the entire team over the rest of the Ivy League.

At the Harvard Select Meet on Feb. 1, which also included Boston College, Boston University and Northeastern, Harvard's Kevin Johnson turned in two fine performances by winning the 200 and the 3000.

Harvard's distance medley team, composed of Lonergan, Johnson, freshman Darren Dinneen and Carswell turned in the most outstanding performance of the day as their team captured first place with a time of 9:46.51 and subsequently qualified for the NCAA Championships on March 7-8.

The women captured three first-place finishes in the Harvard Select Meet, with junior Sarah Lodewick winning the triple jump, senior Jessica Mikszewski winning the 5000 meter and the Crimson medley team winning the relay.

A couple of days after the Harvard Select Meet, Carswell turned in an exciting sixth-place finish at the Millrose games in New York on Feb.7. His dazzling time of 7:57.21 broke his own Harvard indoor 3,000-meter record and automatically qualified him for the NCAAs.

The results of the indoor H-Y-P meet was deja vu from the fall. The men placed third behind first-place Princeton and second-place Yale, and the women placed second behind Princeton and a good 13 points ahead of the woeful Elis. Fortunately for the men, they would exact revenge on Yale at Heps a few weeks later.

At the 1997 Indoor Heptagonal Championship on February 22-23, the same nine teams competed as in the fall, but the men avoided a repeat of the last-place finish of the cross-country team. Instead the Crimson captured fourth place in the meet thanks to Carswell's winning times in the 3,000 (8:12.26) and the mile (4:07.23) as well as his role in running the anchor leg for the victorious distance medley team, the same team that had earlier qualified for a spot in the NCAAs.

Carswell's performance at Heps gave him the Outstanding Male Performer award, the first such award for a Harvard male since 1985. Lonergan won the 5,000 in 14:18.55 and was second to Carswell in the 3,000.

The Crimson women could not hold a candle to the top three finishers at Heps: Princeton, Cornell and Brown. The Crimson's 22 points earned it a disappointing seventh-place finish.

The fact that Harvard did not garner a single first-place finish in any event at Heps and had only one second-place result--thanks to senior Ailey Penningroth's 3524;3 in the Pentathlon--certainly did not help the Crimson in the standings.

While the Crimson men's and women's indoor season came to a close, Carswell and Lonergan headed off to the NCAAs to try and become Harvard's first men's NCAA indoor champion in 18 years. Harvard's own Geoffrey Stiles was the 1979 NCAA pole vault champion and Meredith Rainey won the woman's indoor 800-meter event in 1990.

Carswell and Lonergan did not disappoint. Carswell's third-place finish in the 3000 earned him All-American honors while Lonergan's 11th-place finish in the 5000 meant that the Dublin, Ireland native just missed the same honor. The top 10 finishers in an NCAA event are named All-Americans.

Outdoor Track and Field

The men's and women's track and field teams were involved in a total of six meets during the spring season that culminated in the Heptagonal Outdoor Track and Field Championships on May 10-11 at Penn.

Heading into Heps, the women were counting on two talented distance runners in Angell and Schotte to place near the top. Angell had recorded a 2:16.2 in the 800 and a 4:34.92 in the 1500 earlier in the spring, while Schotte had put together a not-too-shabby time of 10:09.24.

The women also looked to their strong shot putter and 400 hurdler (a rare combination) in Penningroth as well as to their solid long and triple jumper, Lodewick. The Ipswich, MA native won both field events against Yale in an earlier spring dual meet and had become a regular first-place finisher.

While the women finished a disappointing seventh place at Heps, rising freshman star Kristy Johnson made the All-Ivy Second team with her 45.80-meter toss in the hammer throw. Cornell and Princeton dominated almost all the events at Heps, and the Big Red eventually won the title by only a half a point over Princeton.

The men's team was led in the spring once again by Carswell and Lonergan. The men's team was also joined by junior Ethan Philpott, known not only for his bone-crushing body checks on the men's hockey team, but also for his power in the shot-put, as well as fellow thrower and co-captain Mark Clayman.

Both Philpott and Clayman earned top finishes in their events throughout the spring. Junior Husani Barnwell, a triple and long jumper, sophomore Joe Ciollo, a 400 and 800 specialist and Brian Young, a 100-meter dasher, also earned some blue ribbons for the Crimson in the spring season. It was this corps of athletes that Harvard was counting on heading into Heps to end its season.

The men did finish higher than last-season's ninth-place finish, but just barely. The Crimson tied for eighth place in the nine- team field, but Carswell came through once again in the 5,000- meter event. Carswell's winning time of 14:27.98 beat out Chris Langan of Dartmouth to earn him a spot on the First Team All-Ivy.

With Carswell and Lonergan lost to graduation this year, the men have some enormous shoes to fill next season. Dinneen is one potential star for whom Harvard has high expectations in the 1997 cross-country season.

The women will return a good proportion of its top runners next year so their situation is a little less foreboding. Hopefully Harvard can avoid slipping further into the Ivy League's lower echelon.