Indoor Track Sets Sights on Heps

The Harvard men’s and women’s track teams open their seasons tomorrow afternoon with dual meets against Boston College at the Gordon Track and Tennis Center. The two teams—each of which has a bona fide NCAA individual title contender on its roster—will look at tomorrow’s meet as the first step towards beating out the seven other Ivy schools and Navy at the Indoor Heptagonal Championships on Feb. 23-24 at Cornell.

The men’s team, captained by John Cinelli and Kobie Fuller, enters the season as close to full potential in terms of health and participation as it has been in recent years. With the addition of junior Chris Lambert—one of the United Kingdom’s top sprinters—to its team, as well as the usual influx of freshman, the team will look to improve on its 2001 Heps fourth-place finish, which would have been a second-place finish had it not been for a questionable disqualification.

The women’s team, led by co-captains Carrie McGraw and Nicky Grant, will try to stay at the top of a league which has lost an unprecedented level of talent to graduation. While Harvard may have graduated the league’s two greatest athletes—sprinter and hurdler Brenda Taylor ’01 and high jumper Dora Gyorffy ’01—the team still returns strong league title contenders in the throws and jumps and expects considerable improvement in the distances and some freshman reinforcement in the sprints.

Harvard Men

Harvard Coach Frank Haggerty ’68 expects that title-winning talent will be there for the men’s team, but more work must be done if the Crimson is to contend with perennial Ivy powers Penn and Princeton for the Heptagonal title.

“Across the board in all events we’ve got some good top-line strength,” Haggerty said. “What the coaches and competitors have to work on is to ensure that we have some depth.”

The addition of Lambert provides an immediate boost to the team’s indoor 60-meter sprinting core, which typically has been made up of carry overs from the football team, led by junior Sean Meeker. Lambert stands to be not just the best sprinter at Harvard, but one of the best college sprinters in the world.

He proved that this summer when he earned a bronze in the 100 for the United Kingdom at the World University Games in Beijing. His 10.24-second run that earned him fourth at British Nationals last year was nearly a full half-second faster than the winning time at Heps last season.

“Barring the unforeseen, nobody is going to come close to him,” Haggerty said.

Lambert had not run collegiately for his first two years at Harvard due to disagreements over training regiments, but he will be making his Harvard debut in the near future.

Another British native, sophomore Alasdair McLean-Foreman—actually a club teammate of Lambert’s—is the Crimson’s other top title contender. As a freshman, he won the indoor title in the 800. Haggerty plans to move him up to the mile this year, and expectations are that he can run near the four-minute mark.

Coming off of the strongest cross-country season in recent years—in which the team placed fourth at NCAA regionals despite a disappointing fifth place at Heps—optimism is high among the distance runners. Cross-country captain John Friedman, who placed fifth in the 5000 at Heps last year, will contend in that event again this year, as will junior Nathan Shank-Boright, who took fifth at cross-country Heptagonals last month. Haggerty also expects that junior Matthew Seidel, who placed eighth at cross-country Heps, will surprise people in the 3000. Junior John Traugott will contend for the title in the 1000 to follow up a second-place finish in the event last year. Cinelli should also be making a comeback this year following up an illness-plagued junior campaign.

Haggerty believes that a resurgence in the talent in the middle-distances should allow him to keep from having to move back his distance runners. Fuller, who placed third in the 400 at Heps his junior season leads the pack, while seniors Osahon Omoregie and Nnamdi Okike, both of whom placed at Heps as sophomores and then took last year off, will now be back in contention.

Senior Shawn Parker—a third place-finisher at Heps in the 60-meter hurdles—is among the favorites this year, and junior Niall Murphy, once he recovers from football season, is also more than capable of scoring points.

Senior Eric LaHaie, another football carryover, and an incoming freshman, should contend in the pentathlon.

In the field, the Crimson is thinner than it has been in the past. With the graduation of Arthur Fergusson ’01 and an ankle injury last spring to sophomore Tekky Andrew-Jaja, the team has no experienced, healthy triple jump competitors.

The situation is different in the long jump, however, as veterans like Onyechi Ezekwuechem—an eighth-place finish last year—and some incoming freshmen are expecting to make an immediate impact.

In the throws, Harvard suffers an obvious loss in last year’s co-captains of John Kraay and Chris Clever, who scored at Heps last year in the shot put and weight throw, respectively. Senior David Grimm and sophomore Adam Geraldi will have to carry the load among returning athletes.

With talent across the board on the track and enough strength in field, Harvard can contend for the team title at Heps provided the team stays healthy. But all was good as of yesterday.

“We’re very strong and everyone is healthy so far—there are no substantial injuries,” Fuller said. “Our goal is to win the Ivy championship and we all believe we can do it.”

Harvard Women

The women’s team will be out to prove that it can stay at the top of the league with Brown and Yale despite losing one of its best classes in school history—a class that led Harvard to a second-place finish at last year’s Heps and an Indoor Championship two years ago. The Bears and Elis lost talented seniors as well. Brown, in fact, lost a Taylor of its own—Brenda’s twin sister Lindsay.

“We’ve lost some stellar athletes, but we also have some dedicated, talented athletes who are still here,” Grant said. “The worst thing anyone can do is underestimate our potential.”

“In a way it’s a nice position because we’re primed to surprise a lot of people who may not be giving us a second thought,” Haggerty said.

If the Crimson is to back up those claims, however, it will have to get scoring in a number of areas.

“Both the coaches and the competitors, we do recognize that those automatic points aren’t there and we simply have to develop people to score,” Haggerty said.

Two areas in which Harvard already has well-developed talent are the high jump and the throws.

Although four-time defending Heptagonal champion Gyorffy has moved on, Estonian junior Kart Siilats—the defending NCAA Indoor high jump champion—has the potential to be among the national leaders in the event again this year.

Grant, an NCAA provisional qualifier and a second-place finisher at ECACs in weight throw last year, should be the favorite at Heps after finishing third last year.

“Naturally I expect to build upon a good season last year, and I feel I’m stronger than last year,” Grant said.

Sophomore Johanna Doyle, who had an outstanding outdoor season after an injury-plagued indoor season, is also expected to place highly in the weight throw. With Grant’s pick-up of the shot put as a regular event last spring, and the return of sophomore Breeanna Gibson—a solid finisher in each of the throwing events—Harvard has the deepest group of throwers in the Ivies.

The jumps should also be one of Harvard’s strengths, with the return of junior Helena Ronner, who placed second in the triple jump behind Gyorffy and fifth in the long jump at Heps. Haggerty also expects that junior Alayna Miller, who has competed in jumps, sprints, hurdles and relays in her career at Harvard, will have a standout season.

“A lot of people never recognized how valuable [Miller] was to the team,” Haggerty said. “Other than Brenda, she’s been our high scorer. I think you’ll see her come into her own and get the recognition she deserves.”

In the pole vault, Harvard has brought in freshman Chelsea Connolly who jumped 12 feet in high school. She will place highly at Heps if she can reach that height consistently.

In the pentathalon, Harvard will be led by sophomore Sandra Venghaus, who placed at Heps last year, and junior Amanda Shanklin.

Haggerty said that one of the keys to Harvard’s season will be whether it can develop scoring in the mile, the 3000, and the 5000, which the Crimson has been lacking in recent years.

“We need to get two or three of [our mile-runners] in the high fours,” he said. “They know their work’s cut out for them. If we want to stay on par placewise [overall], we have to improve in those areas.”

Junior Melissa Tanner, who was Harvard’s top-finisher in the cross country season, was the Crimson’s lone scorer in the distances at Heps with a sixth-place finish and a 17:20.97 run in the 5000 last year. Haggerty believes her capable of cracking the 17-minute mark this year.

In the shorter distances, now that Taylor and longtime defending 400 champion Marna Schutte ’01 are out of the picture, the Crimson will turn to its veterans who have performed solidly at relays in the past.

Junior Kendra Barron will be a competitor in the 200 and 400. Barron is best-known for leading Harvard to victory in the mile relay during freshman year after passing three teams on her leg, despite losing a shoe during the race.

Junior Ashley Furst, a past scorer at Heps in individual events and relays, is in contention in the 800.

McGraw, who was consistent performer in the 400 and the relays during her sophomore year, suffered through an injury-plagued junior year with tendinitis. But she is going to give everything she has as co-captain of the team.

“Since I’ve had [tendinitis] for a while now, I know what I can and can’t do,” McGraw said. “I’m just going to run through anything, since this is my last year.”

Freshmen Tsitsi Gora from Zimbabwe is among Harvard’s top contenders in the sprints, and freshman Eleanor Thompson has been off to a good start in the 60-meter hurdles. Grant said that the freshmen have done an exceptional job adjusting to life as Harvard athletes.

“Their practices have been going surprising well,” Grant said. “Above all, you can have talent, and not use it. But everyone on this team is so dedicated.”

Harvard will now look to rise above the competitive field that was leveled by graduation in the past year.

“I think we all realize that our school and other schools all had a fabulous senior class, but now we’re all kind of an a clean slate,” McGraw said. “It’s going to make Heps especially exciting this year.”