Mixed Results at Heptagonals

Junior Clara Blattler led the women’s team to a fifth-place team finish by winning the pole vault with a personal-best 3.80 meter leap, while the men’s team scored just eight points on the way to placing eighth in the Heptagonals Championships at the Armory in New York City.

The women’s team opened strong, scoring 28 of its 50 points on day one, leaving the Crimson second behind Cornell’s 54 Day 1 points.

Junior Jitka Tomas placed in the pole vault, scoring two points with a fifth-place finish, and junior co-captain Sally Stanton finished just outside the points in seventh.

The Crimson also fared well in the pentathlon, where senior co-captain Julia Pederson finished second and junior Danielle Mirabal finished third.

The women were hurt by the withdrawal of sophomore Shannon Flahive, the favorite to win the pentathlon, after she aggravated a groin injury while winning the 60-meter hurdles.

On Day 2, sophomore Dara Wilson finished fourth in the 60-meter hurdles in 9.11 seconds.

Meanwhile, sophomore Becky Christensen cleared 1.78 meters in the high jump, good enough for second place in that event.

Sophomore Brittan Smith added a point with a sixth-place finish in the long jump, and Tomas added eight more with a second-place finish in the triple jump.

Junior Maureen Boyle rounded out the scoring with a sixth-place finish in the weight throw.

The fifth-place finish came despite only having 23 girls make the trek to New York.

“We have a lot of really outstanding talent in certain areas,” Stanton said.

“But we don’t really have the depth that say, Cornell has,” she added, referring to the eventual women’s victors.

The Crimson men ended day one with five points, good enough for a seventh-place tie with Yale.

Senior Tim Galebach placed sixth in the 3000 meters with a time of 8:21.13, while senior co-captain Christian Ayers posted the best finish on the men’s side, placing fourth in the weight throw with a 16.61 meter heave.

Yesterday, senior co-captain Sean Barrett placed sixth in the 5000 meters to add another point to Harvard’s total. The distance medley relay team of Galebach, junior Christopher Green, sophomore Nils Wernerfelt, and freshman Charles Gillespie finished fifth in a time of 9:59.21 to add two points and round out the Crimson scoring.

Despite the team’s small numbers and stiff competition, team members were disappointed with the results.

“I would hope that if we need any extra motivation, scoring eight points at a meet like that ought to give it to us,” Barrett said. “It was pretty embarrassing to not even reach double digits at the biggest meet of the year.”

Princeton won the men’s event with 154 points, barely edging Cornell’s total of 151. The Big Red took home the women’s title, scoring 159 points to Brown’s second-place total of 71 points.

For now, Harvard is looking ahead to the outdoor track season, where both teams will look to overcome size disadvantages.

“We’re going to be small again,” Stanton said. “We’re just trying to build on our outstanding talent in each event.”

—Staff writer Brad Hinshelwood can be reached at bhinshel@fas.harvard.edu.