Harvard's brilliant cross country team goes after the East's top prize--the IC4A championship--at New York's Van Cortlandt Park Monday afternoon. Harvard has never won the IC4A's, and the squad will be facing the toughest competition of the year, but if ever a Crimson outfit should rate a shot at the title, this is the one.

Undefeated in dual meet competition (9-0), Greater Boston Big Three and Heptagonal champions, Coach Bill McCurdy's squad has shown an amazing ability to respond in pressure situations all year.

Despite key injuries to sophomore superstars Keith Colburn and Roy Shaw, Harvard has found the depth to field patchwork teams capable of knocking off all competition. In the Greater Boston Championships, for example, four of the top six men couldn't start and a fifth dropped out halfway through. But Peter Dennehy and Frank Sulloway, who had not placed in a race all year, paced the team to victory.

It may be Coach McCurdy himself who effects these and other miracles. In the week before the Big Three Meet, the Stanford graduate performed his annual rites of psyche, getting the team up for what he considers the most important race of the year.

Inspirational posters and nonsense limericks about each runner adorned the Dillon Field House locker room. McCurdy even stooped to propagandizing against the opposition. Refereeing to Yale's Bob Yahn, he wrote, "We'll leave Yahn yawning."

As an additional psychological measure, McCurdy distributed red and white stocking caps to each member of the team, ordering that the caps be worn continuously of the 48 hours before the meet. "I'll make a spot check at 3 a.m., he threatened.

Harvard won the Big Three behind what was then Dough Hardin's strongest effort of the year and three impressive performances from Tim McLoone, Dick Howe and John Heyburn.

In last week's Heptagonals, Hardin won his second straight after a month of injuries, breaking 25 minutes over Van Cortlandt's rigorous five-mile layout. The wiry captain Jim Baker, front runner for the first four miles, finished eighth, Heyburn 18th, McLoone 21st and Howe 22nd as Harvard topped Navy by ten points and Yale by 14.

The victory brings Harvard to the IC4A's undefeated for the first time since 1936. In an interview early last week, McCurdy discussed the Intercollegiate Amateur Athletic Association of America's annual mad dash.

Before the founding of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) some decades ago, McCurdy said, the IC4A was the biggest race in the country. UCLA, Stanford and USC were members. Today, some of the major athletic factories still maintain membership--Notre Dame, for example--but now it is mainly an Eastern event.

Villanova has dominated for the past few years, with superb competitors like Ron Delaney and Oave Patrick, but N.Y.U. and Maryland should challenge the Wildcats this year.

If Harvard finishes among the top six in the race, there is a good chance that the team will eat its Thanksgiving Day turkey somewhere in the mountains of Colorado. McCurdy said that in an effort to give the team top-level competition, the University may send it to the United States Track and Field Federation meet in Denver. Ordinarily, a Harvard team of this ability would compete in the NCAA's, but because of the feud between the Association and the Ivy League this year's squad won't participate.

Unable to resolve the conflict over academic eligibility requirements for athletes, the so-called "1.6 rule" (1.6 out of a possible 4.0 grade average), the Ivy schools have been banned from NCAA competition.

"The NCAA officials should take the 1.6 test," McCurdy suggested.

The Federation is a young organization, founded by the NCAA to compete with the AAU for control of American amateur track. The NCAA-AAU conflict is independent of the Ivy-NCAA dispute. And, although the Ivies are angry with the NCAA, they are more annoyed with the AAU, which they say has been discriminating against college athletes in selecting members of United States teams for international competition.

While McCurdy has been a major factor in the team's success with his aggressive coaching methods (Runner: "What can I do to run faster Coach? McCurdy, "Run faster") and unusual meet style (He dresses in sweat clothes and races madly around the course shouting strategy and encouragement), most of the runners give equal credit to the leadership of the captain, Englishman Jim Baker.

Baker ran undefeated through all the dual meets and won the GBC's, bearing a terrific burden, as first Colburn, then Shaw were lost for the season. When Hardin hurt his hip, the pressure on the gaunt 23-year-old increased, and fatigue finally got the better of him in the Big Three Meet.

After leading for the first three miles, he tired and Hardin raced by him for the victory. The same pattern held for the Heps where Baker led up to the four-mile post but faded to eighth as Hardin raced home. As one harrier put it this week, "Baker has been and inspiration all year. We knew that he would be leading and we therefore would try even harder to stay up with him."

This Harvard cross country team is the best in history. Besides Baker and Hardin, McCurdy has gotten consistently strong races from juniors Tim McLoone, Rhode Islander Frank Sulloway and Peter Dennehy, seniors Dick Howe and Bob Stempson and rapidly improving sophomore ohn Heyburn.

The IC4A's are really little more than desert after a banquet of a season.