W. Track Excels at Penn Relays

The Harvard women's track team won all three events in which it was entered yesterday at the 107th running of the Penn Relays-the world's oldest and largest track and field relay meet-and twice topped the national performance lists in the process.

Co-captain Brenda Taylor opened the day's competition with a personal-best time of 56.11 seconds in the 400-meter intermediate hurdles. Not only was the performance enough to win the meet, it was also the best NCAA time of the season, and the best time run by an American all year.

A few hours later, senior high jumper Dora Gyorffy buried the collegiate competition in the high jump, clearing a meet-record height of 1.91 meters. That height matched her NCAA season-best performance from March.

Then to top off the afternoon, the Crimson 4x400 relay team of sophomore Ashley Furst, co-captain Marna Schutte, Taylor and sophomore Amanda Shanklin posted a winning time of 3:44.26 that was over four seconds better than a field that included the nine Heptagonal competitors minus Brown and Dartmouth.

"I'm so excited," Taylor said. "This is an amazing meet. Harvard came here entered in three events, and we won all three. This carried over from [the 104-51 win over] Yale [last week], and it'll carry over to Heps next week."

The tough competition Taylor faced yesterday pushed her to the best performance of her life. Texas senior Angel Patterson, who had the nation's best time of 56.40 seconds going into the meet, was the favorite.

"[Patterson] has been running real well, and she has been successful for a long time," Taylor said. "She goes out fast, but then dies at the end."

Patterson led nearly the entire race, but Taylor beat her on the race's final hurdle.

"She passed me at the second hurdle," Taylor said. "It was hard for me to feel like I wasn't running in the slow motion. But I knew I had to stay focussed and just run my own race."

With Patterson fading on the final hurdle, the race came down to Taylor and UCLA's Sheela Johnson, who was still running strong. But Taylor held for the win.

"It was a tight race, and it came down to the last hurdle," Taylor said. "I just happened to have the momentum at that last hurdle."

Patterson placed third at 56.76 seconds, while Johnson clocked in at 56.23 seconds.

Taylor's time of 56.11 seconds was over a half-second improvement from her previous best, a 56.64 second run in the preliminaries of the 2000 Olympic Trials. Yesterday's performance will give her confidence in her quest to close her Harvard career with an NCAA title. She earned All-American honors with a seventh-place finish at NCAAs last season.

"This was exactly what I needed," Taylor said. "I had never beaten [Patterson] before, so this was a big boost for me."

Gyorffy's first-place finish in the high jump wasn't quite as suspenseful as Taylor's victory. Ultimately, the only suspense was whether she would break the meet record, and how high she would go.

In past seasons, the Penn Relays have been one of the few meets of the season capable of providing Gyorffy with the serious competition that was lacking at the Ivy level. Yet nowadays, Gyorffy is in a class by herself at the college ranks. The next-closest competitor to Gyorffy yesterday could not clear higher than 1.76 meters.

It was Gyorffy's second victory of her career at the Penn Relays. She upset future U.S. Olympian Erin Aldrich of Texas during her freshman year for the title, but then fell short of Aldrich in her sophomore season. Gyorffy chose not to compete at Penn last season.

Gyorffy has never won the high jump title at Outdoor NCAAs. If she does compete there this season, she would be the heavy favorite. No one else in the country has cleared higher than 1.84 meters this season.

The NCAA Championships at the end of May are still a long way off. Taylor and Gyorffy will have plenty of high-stakes competition to keep themselves occupied before then. Harvard will host a final tune-up meet against Boston College on Sunday before next weekend's Outdoor Heptagonal Championships at Princeton, where the Crimson will be looking to unseat three-time defending champion Brown in the team's biggest meet of the season.