Providence College runners swept second, third, and fourth places in Franklin Park yesterday to hand the Crimson cross-country team its first defeat of the season.

The 25-30 Friar victory dashed Harvard's fond dream for 1964--an undefeated season.

Walt Hewlett kept the score close by posting an easy victory, chugging up and down the 4.5-mile course in 22:21. The All-America junior took the lead soon after the starting gun and was never seriously pushed.

But after Hewlett came that three-man Friar pack that Crimson coach Bill McCurdy had fretted about all week.

Providence Junior Barry Brown crossed the finish line 0:23 behind the victor and sophomores Paul Harris and Bob Powers, who had run right together every step of the way, placed third and fourth.

Crain Finishes Fifth

Crimson captain Bill Crain, who McCurdy had hoped would finsh in front of the pack, placed behind it instead, only 0:04 ahead of Friar sophomore Al Campbell. Campbell's sixth-place finish clinched the victory for Providence.

So Harvard's second line of runners, Dave Allen, John Ogden, Roy Cobb, and Jim Smith, whose strategy had been to break up the pack, all crossed the finish line after the meet was decided.

Allen came in seventh, Ogden ninth, Cobb twelfth, and Smith seventeenth.

Crimson soccer player Keith Chiappa, a middle-distance runner in the winter and spring, humbled the regulars with a spirited eighth-place finish.

But it was a good Providence team, one of the best squads in the East, that beat the Crimson. And the issue wasn't decided until the final mile.

Brown had second place cinched before the race was half over, but Crain stayed within striking distance of the Friar sophomores, Harris and Powers, until the late stages, when he seemed to fade.

And Allen stayed right with the sixth place Campbell, losing out by a scant 0:03.

Chiappa also challenged Campbell in the early stages, but Ogden never threatened the top four Friar runners and Smith was out of scoring position all the way.

So the Crimson won't go unbeaten this year. The goal now is to lose no more, but McCurdy's troops, judging from yesterday's performance, will be hard pressed to keep that resolution.

Smith hasn't rounded into form the way McCurdy had hoped and the front two of Hewlett and Crain may well be, sad to say, a front one.

Next week could be another setback as the squad journeys to Brown to meet the consistently tough Bruins.