Men’s and Women’s Squads Place Second at HYP

Just a week after sweeping both the men’s and women’s track and field competition at the Battle of Beantown, both Harvard track teams were left playing second fiddle to home team and Ivy League rival Princeton this Saturday at the annual HYP Meet.

The Tigers, with 105 points, more than doubled the Crimson score of 48 in the men’s competition after 17 events. Yale finished third, with 27 points.

On the woman’s side, things weren’t much better for Harvard, which suffered a 90.5 to 47.5 defeat by Princeton in 15 events. The Bulldogs once again finished third, with 21 points.

Despite not coming out on top overall, the Crimson still enjoyed a number of individual successes.

For the men’s team, freshman Kenneth Wang Kan won both the long jump (7.02 m) and the triple jump (14.43 m). It was his second consecutive week winning both events.

“I was really pleased with the way Ken competed to get the double win,” Harvard coach Jason Saretsky said. “Princeton has a strong group of jumpers, and Yale has a guy for the last few years that has really dominated the event...[Wang Kan’s] a great competitor, a real special talent.”

Wang Kan’s teammate, sophomore Steven Geloneck, qualified with the top time in the 60 meter dash but finished second overall in the event. The same thing had happened one week earlier to Geloneck in the Battle of Beantown.

On the women’s side, the freshmen had the most success. Olivia Weeks won the triple jump event, with a 12.10-meter leap. Fellow first-year Mary Hirst took the title in the high jump, with a 1.65-meter bound, while her teammate, junior Dina Emde, finished second. To top it off, freshman Ashtynn Baltimore and sophomore Christine Reed also finished one-two in the 60-meter hurdles, with respective times of 8.88 and 8.95 seconds. It was an improvement for both, as Baltimore finished second and Reed seventh in the same event last weekend.

“We’ve got some outstanding freshmen,” Saretsky said. “They’ve done a great job of getting after it and competing all season long. It’s a special group, probably one of our most talented groups of freshmen to come through here, but they’ve also been putting in the work day-in and day-out in practice and they’ve been doing the little things that are so critical in our sport.”

For Weeks, it was her second consecutive week winning the triple jump.

“I had fouled a few of my jumps [early on], so I had to get down some consistency and some rhythm...to be able to jump well,” Weeks said.

Hirst, who missed the first few competitions of the season with a torn meniscus, also continued to impress with her first place finish. The win marked her first victory of the season.

“I was pretty sore and tired from my other events, but my coach and I were joking that when I’m tired, I perform the best,” Hirst said. “I just stayed focused and jumped high...It was really fun and exciting to get back into [it] again.”

Despite winning the morning jump competitions, the Crimson did not have as much success as it had a week earlier in the running events.

After finishing first in the 500-meter dash a week ago, freshman Carlyle Davis finished second to Princeton’s Danielle Glaeser Saturday in the 400-meter dash. Harvard junior Brian Hill, who won the men’s 500-meter dash at the Battle of Beantown, finished second on Saturday to the Tigers’ Russell Dinkins in the one mile run. Freshman Jeremy Gilmour, coming off a first place finish in the 3000-meter run, finished fourth in the one-mile.

The women were also victorious at the Battle of Beantown in the 4x400 yard relay, but finished second to Princeton this weekend. The men, who won that event a week ago as well, did not place in the top three this time around.

“I think overall, it was a good competition for our group,” Saretsky said. “The competition itself is going to be a bit different so I always try to tell the kids on our team what they can control, and they can’t control how fast the people next to them run.”

Despite not coming out on top this weekend, the team isn’t too disappointed with its performance.

“It’s about what we expected where we’d be at,” Saretsky said. “On the men’s side, that’s the first time we’ve beaten Yale in a dual- or tri-meet since I’ve been here, so from that perspective, it’s good to get over that hump. We weren’t elated about it and doing cartwheels...but I really do feel as if we’re making strides.”