"It's mind-boggling to have an NCAA champ from Harvard in the pole vault," coach Bill McCurdy said yesterday.

Another mind boggler was that at the same time Stiles was clearing the bar on his winning jump in the pole vault, the two-mile relay team was tearing up the track. This same coincidence occurred the previous week at the IC4As.

"McCurdy was right when he correlated my doing well with the relay team doing well." Stiles said.

The two-mile relay team of Dixon, Chafee, McNulty and Murphy blazed to a 7:32.0 finish, .1 seconds behind Western Michigan and .7 seconds away from Nebraska, which captured the dramatic event.

The race began routinely as Dixon, who later became the first Harvard freshman ever to receive All-American status in track, led off.

Dixon handed off to Chafee, who moved up to take the lead for a lap or two before losing it, passing the baton and a second-place spot to McNulty.

"Chafee was just brilliant in the trials and the finals," McCurdy said, adding, "He put us where we wanted to be."

The race continued smoothly until the University of Texas-El Paso runner caught the right leg of Notre Dame's runner, who fell down on his hip in front of McNulty and forced next year's cross country captain to hurdle over the body.

As a result of the jump, McNulty found himself by the walls in lane 4, but he quickly moved back into the running before handing off to Murphy, whose hands were already full with the task of catching Georgetown's Kevin Byrne.

"I hadn't trained in three weeks because of my sore knee, but the euphoria of the moment took over," Murphy said.

Murphy overcame Byrne and held him off with a 1:51.2 split to finish fourth in the event, while Texas-El Paso was later disqualifed for tripping and Harvard wound up with a bronze medal.

"It was all-out racing," Chafee said.

"The schools had some classy runners, but we held our own," McNulty said, adding, "Now we really have something to be cocky about."

Coach McCurdy, looking at the race from a statistical point of view, said, "You take five people to the Nationals. They all qualify for the finals. They all score. And they all become All-Americans. How the hell can you do any better than that?"

"It's too bad the stock market was closed today or else I'd have bought some shares," McCurdy added.