Fit Crimson Breaks Out at Van Cortland Park

It was only a year ago that the Harvard’s men’s cross country team remained mired in mediocrity.

It placed No. 32 out 34 at the Pre-National Meet in Indiana.

It finished last at the Heps Championships.

It lost by over 140 points to Dartmouth, Cornell, and Columbia at Regionals.

The arrival of new coach David Saretsky and the maturation of a precocious class of juniors, however, have jumpstarted the once stagnant program on a road to recovery.

Bouncing back from a disappointing performance in last week’s meet against Yale, the men’s cross country team had a breakout race this weekend at the Iona Meet of Champions at Van Cortlandt Park in New York City, finishing No. 4 out of 20 teams with a score of 108 points.

Integral to the turnaround has been the new training regimen introduced by Saretsky.

“Everyone has liked the new coach so far, has liked the new program he’s been doing,” said junior Ryan Hafer, who placed No. 15 with a time of 25:31 for the eight-kilometer race. “People seem to have put a lot more trust into the program than in past years.”

Opponents also took notice.

“‘Oh shoot, I guess Harvard has a coach now,’” one Brown coach said, according to Hafer.

The top five runners for the Crimson all registered huge personal bests—junior Chris Green lopped an astounding 43 seconds off of his previous best time for the course—as the Crimson maintained a tight pack throughout the race. Harvard finished with a miniscule spread of 21 seconds between its first and fifth men and placed five men in the top 29 of the field of 172.

Senior Sean Barrett, who led the Crimson with a No. 14 place finish in a time of 25:29, credited some of the team’s success to tougher training sessions.

“In practice this week,” Barrett said, “we really started turning up the intensity and started to run faster...We tried to translate that over to the meet.”

The women’s team, reeling after its blowout defeat to Princeton and Yale last weekend, recovered with a solid, if unspectacular, performance on Saturday at the Meet of Champions, finishing No. 7 out of 18 teams and placing five women in the first 52 finishers.

The meet marked the season debut of standout All-American Lindsey Scherf, who had been sidelined for the first few weeks of the season.

Leading the way as usual, Scherf, who had dominated the meet in past years, finishing No. 4 in 2004 and winning the event in 2005, placed No. 7 with a time of 21:32 for the six-kilometer women’s race.

Behind Scherf was junior Sarah Bourne, who placed No. 31 with a time of 22:40—ten seconds faster than her time in last year’s meet—and sophomore Jessica Bryant, who placed No. 44 in a time of 23:14, an improvement of 39 seconds over her time from last year’s meet.

Both the men and women will return home to run in the New England Championships at Franklin Park in Boston next weekend, which will serve as a tune-up for the illustrious Pre-Nationals Meet the following weekend in Indiana.