Select Few Lead Cross Country All Year

Smaller, individually strong teams excel when it comes to cross country.

While the size of the Harvard men’s and women’s teams might not match up to other squads’, this past season it found its success on the backs of its strongest runners.

Although next year might be the key chance for Harvard to make a run at the Ivy League championship, the return of junior Alasdair McLean-Foreman certainly provided a major boost this season.

Veteran long distance runners Mairead O’Callaghan and Beverly Whelan led the way for the women’s team—showing the strength of the senior leadership on the team.

At the “Big Two Championship” against Yale, the men’s team fell to their close rivals by only a single point for the second straight season. McLean-Foreman won the whole meet in a time of 24:24 over the course at Franklin Park. Just three seconds behind him was the Bulldogs’ star runner, Lucas Meyer—forming a rivalry that would hit its stride at the Heptagonal championships.

The equivalent meet for the women, the Harvard-Yale-Princeton tri-meet, saw the Crimson fall to its two rivals. O’Callaghan finished eighth for Harvard, its best finish on the day.

On Oct. 18, the Crimson traveled to Northern Iowa University to compete in the NCAA Pre-nationals. The men finished 32nd out of 35, while the women 26th of 33 teams.

McLean-Foreman placed 169th—the best Harvard finisher—and was followed just 10 spots behind by freshman Sean Barrett. Barrett’s finish solidified his status as one of the Crimson’s best cross country runners of the future, just beginning to hit his stride as a first-year student.

“You have to love this sport to put up with the grueling workouts,” Barrett said. “It’s our love of the sport and desire for excellence that makes us want to improve. We don’t want to let the other guys on the team down.”

On the women’s side, a couple of unfortunate health-related problems prevented the Harvard runners from doing the best they felt they could.

“Mairead, our captain, was sick, and did not run as well as she had hoped to,” junior Kimberly Smith (22:52.6) said. “And Whelan, another top finisher, had sprained her ankle earlier in the season and twisted it again during the race and was unable to finish.”

Returning to league competition for the Heptagonal Championships, McLean-Foreman—a self-professed middle distance runner—made his mark by performing better than any Harvard male runner in 17 years.

His time of 24:44.45 was good enough for second place and All-Ivy honors, propelling the Crimson to a sixth-place finish.

“I was very happy with the race myself,” McLean-Foreman said. “[As] a middle distance specialist used to running 800 meters, 8,000 meters is always pretty tough so I’m pleased with the result.”

The women’s team finished one place worse than their counterparts, placing seventh on the back of sophomore Laura Maludzinski’s 26th-place finish. After the meet, the members of the team were satisfied with their performance, but still felt that on another day, they might have been right up there with the leaders.

“Maybe I could not have finished better on that given day,” Maludzinski said, “but there were people who I was right behind last year and they finished in the top 12 this year, and I think that I should be up with them.”

At NCCA Regionals, the last team meet of the year, Harvard repeated its sixth-place finish from a week before, but this time in a field of 33.

McLean-Foreman led the way once again, taking 11th—falling to both Steve Sundell of Columbia who won Heptagonals and Meyer of Yale, the first time McLean-Foreman had lost all year.

Following his teammate closely in 15th place was sophomore Timothy Galebach in one of his best races of the year.

The women also had a successful end to the season, taking home 13th at the Regionals, with O’Callaghan finishing up her Harvard cross country career with a 38th-place finish.

While the women will be graduating O’Callaghan and fellow varsity runner Whelan, almost the entire men’s team will return next fall when the Crimson will be one of the favorites to win Heptagonals.

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