Scherf Earns NCAA Spot

After long up-and-down seasons, both Harvard cross-country teams finished up their year this past Saturday with a respectable showing in the NCAA East Regional Championships.

The men rebounded from a disappointing finish at Heptagonals to place 11th out of 37 teams—three spots behind last season’s finish. On the women’s side, the Crimson placed a few spots higher, finishing eighth in a field of 35, an improvement from its 13th-place showing in 2003.

“Looking back on the season there were quite a few disappointments—in particular our team performance at Heptagonals,” said the Harvard men’s captain Reed Bienvenu. “We set our goals quite high at the beginning of the season, and even though we had a lot of talent on the team it didn’t come together when we needed it to.”

Bienvenu led the Crimson by finishing a personal best at the meet, 26th out of 229 in a time of 31:53.0 for the Van Cortlandt course.

“I was pleased with our performance considering how many of our varsity guys weren’t running with us due to injuries or illnesses,” Bienvenu said. “We didn’t have [senior] Alasdair McLean-Foreman or [sophomore] Peter Mullen, two of our top three runners, but some of the younger guys really stepped up and had some of their best performances of the season.”

The Crimson’s other top finishers came in quick succession after running a long race together. Sophomores Kevin Lyons (32:42.6) and Sean Barrett (32:42.7) were 64th and 65th, respectively.

Overall, Harvard completed the race with 328 team points, well behind the day’s winner Providence College—which took home the victory with 51 points.

The women’s race was also won by Providence—completing the sweep with 54 points.

The Crimson women totaled 232 points, a large improvement over the last two seasons’ performances.

As freshman Lindsey Scherf has done all season, she led Harvard on Saturday by finishing seventh out of 230 in a time of 20:54.8. The quality effort qualifies her, with one of the four at-large bids, to compete in the NCAA Finals as the Crimson’s lone representative.

Harvard’s other top scorer, junior Laura Maludzinski, came in 32nd with time of 22:02.3. Her time was an improvement of over 40 seconds for Maludzinski from last year’s pace.

Now, with the season over, both teams have to look forward in the future to see how they can turn the strong and consistent performances from the underclassmen this year into better team results in the upcoming seasons.

“The younger guys are going to have to look back at some of the mistakes that we made this season and figure out a way to avoid them in the future,” Bienvenu said.

—Staff writer Gabriel M. Velez can be reached at gmvelez@fas.harvard.edu.