Courtney Smith Takes First Place in Women's HYP 5K

Last September, the Harvard women won the annual Harvard-Yale-Princeton meet by a one-point margin for the first time in over 10 years.

This year, the team would not be able to climb back to the top spot.

Despite junior Courtney Smith’s victory in the women’s 5K, Yale’s heavy presence on the leaderboard—taking complete ownership of 2nd through 7th places—prevented the Harvard women’s cross country meet from taking home the overall win for the second year in a row.

After racing last fall in the NCAA Championships—as well as being an indoor track All-American and running in the USATF Olympic Trials in the 10,000-meter race—Smith ran a solid race, taking home the title of individual champion in this historic race.

“It’s a really special race since its one of the oldest tri-meets in the country,” Smith said. “I think we went out there today to do what we love and had some great races.”

Junior Elianna Shwayder also had a top-10 performance, coming in eighth place with a time of 19:24.9.

On the men’s side, Yale senior James Randon was the only runner to break 25 minutes in the 8K, finishing in first with a time of 24:58.9. Randon was followed by a string of Princeton runners.

“Today we sat out a few guys and held a couple more back from going all out because of sickness and injuries,” captain Brandon Price said. “Despite that, we still were able to compete well with two of the best teams in the league.”

Price led Harvard in seventh place with a time of 25:14.7, followed by freshman Murimi Nyamu in eighth.

On both the men’s and women’s teams, the freshman had strong debut races and played big roles in keeping Harvard competitive with Princeton and Yale.

“We’re a young team. We have six new people this year, but they’re fitting in really well and I already feel like we’re best friends with all of them. The new freshmen really stepped it up,” said Smith.

On the men’s side, Murimi Nyamu and Will Battershill were eighth and 13th overall, but were second and fourth amongst the freshmen. For the women, Freshmen Eliza Rego and Gillian Meeks were the third and fourth finishers for Harvard, coming in 14th and 15th places respectively. Only one other freshman, Princeton’s Ally Rome, beat Rego and Meeks.

Overall, Princeton led the men’s event by a significant margin, finishing with 23 points ahead of Yale’s 49 points and Harvard’s 55 points. In the women’s 5k, Yale dominated with 23 points, Harvard was second with 53 points and Princeton had 63 points.

“We're looking forward to our next race in two weeks at the Paul Short Invitational. We'll have everyone racing at one hundred percent capacity then,” Price said.

—Crimson staff writer Rena Simkowitz can be reached at rsimkowitz@college.harvard.edu.