The Crimson cross-country team salvaged a fourth place finish in the Heptagonal meet in New York yesterday despite a sad failure on the part of sophomore Walt Hewlett.

Hewlett, considered one of the cofavorites to win the individual championships, staggered home in 27th place, behind three Harvard teammates and a host of runners he had beaten earlier in the year.

Bill Straub of Army won the Individual title in a shocking upset over Cornell's Jim Byard and Steve Machooka, but the Big Red squad hung on to nip Brown, 57-58, for the team championship.

Navy Takes Third Place

Defending champion Navy managed to pull out a third place finish with 91 points, ahead of Harvard with 96. Army was well back in fifth place with 134, followed by Princeton, Penn, Dartmouth, Yale, and Columbia.

Straub, who had lost to both Byard and Machooka in the Army-Cornell meet Nov. 2, won by a convincing six seconds over Byard in the slow time of 25:29.7 over a rain-soaked course. Byard, who had not lost a race previously, beat out his teammate Machooka by three seconds.

Brown's captain Dave Farley finished fourth, just eight seconds ahead of Harvard's caption ED Meehan, running perhaps his finest race of the season. Junior Bill Crain was the second Crimson runner to finish, coming in ninth.

After that it was a long drought as Crimson supporters waited for their next runner to finish. It was another three minutes before John Ogden trooped in in 26th, followed by Hewlett one place back. Langdon Burwell rounded out the top five for Harvard, coming in 31st.

"It was just one of those days," said Crimson assistant coach ED Stowell. "Hewlett couldn't get started at all. I don't think the weather bothered him--it rained on everyone else, too."