Consistency. That's what Kristen Linsley gives the Harvard women's cross country team, and that's what the team gives her.

The Crimson captain has missed only one meet in her four years at Harvard and has provided key points ever since her first race. As captain of the most successful cross country team in lvy League history, she has led her runners through a season of consistently overwhelming performances.

She's not the best runner on the team. She's not even the second best. But as Harvard's fourth leading harrier, Linsley gives her team steady scoring performances.

And she has steadily improved those performances. Her freshman year she held down Harvard's seventh spot, and she consistently finished in one of Harvard's top three slots as a sophomore. Last year as the team's number two runner, she finished one or two seconds behind Ivy champion Darlene Beckford on four occasions.

This year, however, posed a new challenge. Linsley's times have improved, but her improvement has not been rewarded by higher team ranking. Freshmen Jenny Stricker and Kate Wiley have bcome. Harvard's top two runners.

But that doesn't bother Linsley. "We knew that there were good freshmen. I was worried about it. But it's so good to know that they're ahead of you. I don't know if I would have thought that two years ago." Linsley has grown to think more of the team than of herself.

Harvard cross country has been a big factor in Kristen Linsley's personal growth. In her first Crimson race, she found herself running Harvard's fifth best time. "I started crying," she remembered "Everybody was yelling. 'You're fifth, you're fifth, and I didn't know what they meant."

After the race she learned that a team's first five runners score, and that by holding off four UMass runners she had won the meet for Harvard.

Much as changed since that first meet, Now the Cohasset, Mass. native is the experienced senior, the one the freshmen rally around. "She has been the focal point of the freshman group." coach Pappy Hunt said. "They look up to her tremendously."

The Harvard captain, though, is a woman of few words, "I don't think I'm the leader type," she said. "I usually-keep my mouth shut." But Linsley still leads. "Kristen works in a subtle way, but a very strong way," Hunt said.

The Fine Arts concentrator likes to do things her own way. "I do best when I tell myself what to do," she said. "During a race I perform best when there's someone else around, but I like it best when there's not."

This year there's almost always been someone around. Linsley's never far from the leaders, and freshmen Kathy Goode and Mary Jeanne Barrett are usually right with her.

The physical closeness during the race is matched by an emotional togetherness on and off the course. "You keep track of people as individuals," Linsley said. "You keep a line on everybody's life and they keep a line on yours."

Both of Linsley's parents went to Harvard and her three older sisters followed the family tradition as well. While she was a freshman, her sister Sarah was the cross country captain, putting, the younger Linsley recalls, "a little added pressure on me."

"I basically ignored her," Linsley said. "It was much better the next year."

Linsley spent her high school years on the field hockey team, or more accurately, on the field hockey bench. She ran cross country casually for Cohasset High, completing in meets without practicing regularly. Cross country interested her largely because she could train on her own. And she enjoyed the benefits.

"If you are lucky and you don't get hurt," the 5-9 senior said, "you get back out of it what you put into it." Linsley is living proof of her words' validity.

"Sometimes Harvard can tend to be up and down," she said. "Sometimes you feel kind of lost. But with cross country, there's always that something there."