Long Distance Events Help M. Track to Win

At the Harvard track and field team’s dual meet with Boston College in December, the Crimson decided not to do the traditional post-meet clapping.

After the Crimson men were able to pull out their first dual meet victory in over a year by beating Northeastern by a score of 75-68, the team decided to resurrect its old tradition and engaged in a hearty victory clap.

The victory for the men comes before a long break for tests—the Crimson next competes after finals on Jan. 29.

“We’ve got a really hard month of training ahead so the result on Saturday came at a great time,” co-captain Alasdair McLean-Foreman said. “We’re really motivated from our performance, and everyone’s ready to step up the intensity when we come up against tougher competitors in the next few weeks.”

Saturday was not as bright for the Crimson women as they fell to the Huskies at the Gordon Track and Field Center by a score of 73-54.

“It’s always competitive racing against Northeastern, because they are pretty strong in the sprinting events and some of the field events as well,” co-captain Laura Maludzinski said. “This year, because of our big freshman addition to the team, we are also stronger in the sprinting and field events, so that is why we were able to compete more evenly with them.”

MEN

Last year, Harvard lost to the Huskies by a score of 82-62, but as the meet was winding down this Saturday, the Crimson men found themselves with a chance to pull out the victory this year.

With the meet score at 70-68 in favor of Harvard, the 4 x 800 meter relay would be the deciding factor in the meet.

“We were all cheering for our relay team, and that boosted our team’s solidarity as it’s not often that the relay actually matters, as far as the final score is concerned,” senior Tekky Andrew-Jaja said.

After Harvard had dominated many of the longer running events, it took an early lead and managed to best the Northeastern relay team by almost a full lap of the 200-meter track to complete the long distance domination and secure its first win of the season.

The relay team of freshmen Haibo Lu and Christopher Green, sophomore Sean Barrett and McLean-Foreman may have secured the victory, but Harvard won the meet on the back of its sweep of the long distance events.

The prime example of this strength came in the 3,000-meter race in which Harvard took the top seven spots. Leading the Crimson in the race was sophomore Kevin Lyons—who won the race in 8:45.13.

Barrett won the mile in 4:26.62, while taking second in the 800 meter run—just over two seconds behind Green’s winning time of 1:57.74

McLean-Foreman completed the sweep of the long distance events by winning the 1,000-meter run in a time of 2.34.01, while sophomore Jonathan Paul finished just under two seconds behind him for second place.

In the field events, Tekky-Jaja won the high jump with a leap of 2.01 meters. Classmate Travis Hughes took second in the long jump and won the triple jump.

Tekky-Jaja and Hughes picked up the slack in the jumping events after juniors Samyr Laine and Lawrence Adjah had to sit out the meet due to injuries.

“Hopefully they’ll be recovered soon. And because they’re two of the best athletes in the league, once they’re back it’s going to be a big boost to our overall total,” McLean-Foreman said.

Hinson’s throw of 15.34 meters led a Crimson sweep of the top spots in the shot put. While Hinson and the rest of the Harvard men can take pride in pulling out the victory against Northeastern on Saturday, the team must begin to look ahead to the more important meets later in the season.

And according to Hinson, the team needs to perform at a consistently high level.

“After going through the results, I was still disappointed with the number of performances we had that would score points at the conference meet. There’s a lot of work to be done in January,” Hinson said.

One area where hope lies for the Crimson as the season unfolds further is sprinting. With the addition of a number of new sprinters this season, the team and its captains are optimistic.

“We did an excellent job in the distances and throws, and we’re very strong in those events,” McLean-Foreman said. “Having said that, we’ve got some new guys in the sprints who have shown great potential and its really exciting to see what they can do as the season progresses.”

WOMEN

With the women, as with the men, the meet came down to the relays.

Unfortunately for the Crimson women, they dropped both relays to Northeastern and ended up losing by 19 points.

The real heartbreaker for Harvard came in the 4 x 400 meter race when a Harvard team known for its long distance strength almost pulled off the victory against the Huskies’ squad. The Crimson lost that relay by .02 seconds.

Additionally, freshman Chidimma Kalu showed some promise as a rookie for the sprinting side of the Harvard team, winning the 200-meter dash in a time of 25.13 and then taking second in the 60 meter sprint.

“I’m really excited that we have such strong sprinters this year, like Kalu, and the depth in the sprinting events should help us a lot in the meets to come,” Maludzinski said.

The majority of the rest of the Crimson’s points came in the long distance events, in which Harvard won the mile, 800-meter and 3,000-meter runs.

Another freshman came through for the Crimson in the 3,000-meter run as Sarah Bourne beat out the second-place runner for Northeastern by nine seconds to finish with a time of 10:29.69.

In the mile, Maludzinski took home the victory with a time of 5:16.79. In the 800 meter run, she finished just over a second behind freshman Julia Rozer’s winning time of 2:17.69.

“The mile was a very strategic race—the first half went out in 2:50, the second half closed in 2:25—I took it out slowly and waited for someone to pass so that I could drift off her, but it didn’t happen until halfway through,” Maludzinski said.

Rosalinda Castaneda, Harvard’s other captain and another key component of its long distance runnimg corps, could not race on Saturday because of a knee injury.

Although Harvard did not have one senior in the field events, it won the high jump and the weight throw on the efforts of its underclassmen.

Sophomore Sandra Stankovic lept to victory in the high jump by clearing a height of 1.65 meters. Freshman Maureen Boyle’s throw of 12.97 meters was good enough to beat a field of weight throwers that was entirely composed of first-year collegiate athletes.

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