Sophomore record-breaker Anne Sullivan was talking about cross country captain Sarah Linsley and her freshman sister Kristin at Franklin Park yesterday afternoon, minutes after the harriers had neatly handled UMass and Brandeis in their season-opening tri-meet, 26-31-78.

"Yeah," Sullivan said, "Sarah had to call Kris up this morning to remind her about the race. She's always forgetting things."

But Linsley the younger remembered to show up, and she saved the Crimson's upset victory over UMass by holding off a swarm of UMass runners right behind her to finish a surprisingly high 11th place.

But the bulk of the Crimson's low scoring had come earlier, when Sullivan, Karla Amble, Therese Sellers and Linsley the senior turned in four sterling performances to set up the Minutemen -- Minutewomen? -- for the coup de grace.

Sullivan smashed her own record for the 3.1-mile course by five seconds, taking the lead early and then striding home all alone in 17:26, 37 seconds ahead of UMass's top finisher.

Amble, a junior who sat out all but the first race last year with an injury, looked strong and steady throughout en route to a third-place finish (18:15).

And Sellers--a tall freshman from Germantown, Pa., who had but one cross country race in her life before yesterday-- stayed with Amble stride for stride to take fourth in 18:16.

But the gutsiest showing came from captain Linsley, who failed to fold despite a leg injury, coming home seventh with an 18:30 time. And when Kristin took 11th in 19:16, just ahead of a field of red UMass shirts, Harvard had the victory.

UMass owned the second, fifth, sixth, eighth and tenth slots--with one Brandeis runner wedged in at number nine--but it wasn't enough for the victory.

"This was a helluva team race," coach Pappy Hunt said afterward. "What they did was what I've been trying to get them to do--run that first mile tough."

The win is all the more impressive considering the number of runners missing from the squad. Freshman standouts Mary Herlihy and Paula Newnham, and sophomore Jo Forman -- three of Hunt's top four runners--sat out with injuries, and junior Kat Taylor is not running.

"We would have really whomped on them if we'd had everybody," one team member said afterward.

From the looks of things, they did anyway.