Taking the big leap

March 10, 1979--Senior track captain Geoff Stiles captures the NCAA indoor pole vault competition at 17 feet, 3 inches, setting a new Ivy League, New England and Harvard record. The thinclad two-mile relay team of Adam Dixon, John Chafee, Thad McNulty and John Murphy finishes third. The five trackmen make All-American as the Crimson grabs seventh in the nation.

After a sparkling indoor season, injuries devastated the spring version of men's track. The squad could not muster an impressive outdoor record because of a lack of depth. But the tracksters improved in every meet, particularly in the throwing events where Joe Pelligrini, Tom Lenz and Gary Quantock garnered many unexpected points.

Veteran distance men Eddie Sheehan, Peter Fitzsimmons and Mark Meyer capped their Harvard careers in a typically steady manner. The sprinters pulled off some stellar surprises in the face of debilitating injuries; but the jumpers, except for the superlative Stiles, had a disappointing season.

In the end, Stiles was the story of Harvard track this year. He has improved his vaulting by almost three feet since freshman year, solely on the strength of relentless dedication.

Not quite

Jan. 11, 1979--The Harvard men's basketball team falls, 81-61, to Northeastern for its 12th straight defeat. The Huskies rack up 40 points in 15 minutes during the second half, to the cagers' ten.

When the Harvard hoopsters embarked on their Western trip at Christmas, the team was riding a high, coming off some good early-season contests and a strong showing against Boston College in Boston Garden. When they returned, entrenched in the depths of a miserable slump, coach Frank McLaughlin said his squad was "fatigued."

Co-captain Glenn Fine, a Rhodes scholar and playmaker extrordinaire, combined with senior co-captain Bob Hooft and freshman star Don Fleming to provide flashes of brilliance. But Princeton and Penn came and conquered, the season drew to a creeping close, and the Great Leap Forward into big-time basketball did not develop.

Curveball misses outside

May 13, 1979--Cornell spoils Harvard pitching star Larry Brown's final appearance for the Crimson and kills any chance for the Crimson to retain the Eastern League (EIBL) title with a 3-1 win in Ithaca, N.Y.

The batsmen could never quite put it together this year. Despite several fine individual performances, the squad could only manage a 22-14 overall record, a fourth-place finish in the Eastern League and second in the Greater Boston League (GBL) after sweeping both titles last year.

Though success still eluded Harvard, the batsmen ended their fractious ways under the leadership of genial rookie coach Alex Nahigian. Mark Bingham and Mike Stenhouse took one-two in GBL batting and senior hurler Tim Clifford finished second on the Eastern League pitching roster.

The Crimson had a shot at catching eventual Eastern League winner Navy, from whom the batsmen swept a doubleheader in early April. But the loss to Cornell, on the last weekend of the season, dropped Harvard's league record to 9-5 and prevented the Crimson from playing in the NCAA playoffs.

The high point of the Harvard year came May 4 when Clifford won both sides of a doubleheader, 11-4 and 8-2, over Dartmouth in Hanover, N.H. The victories put Harvard within striking range of the league leaders; but, as was so often the case this year, success proved elusive in the end.