Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, they say--but you'd better start adding track meets to that list.

Because as this weekend's Greater Boston Championships at Harvard's Gordon Indoor Track and Tennis Facility showed, a lot of "close" finishes--that is, second and third place finishes--can make up for relatively few wins.

In the men's competition, for example, Boston University won more events (six) than Northeastern (five), but the N.U. men ran away with their third consecutive Boston-area collegiate track championship by placing second and third more often. The Huskies ended up with 97.5 points, easily outdistancing the Terriers (second with 64 points) and the rest of the seven-team field.

And B.U. narrowly escaped with the women's title, despite winning twice as many events (10-5) as second-place Boston College. The Terriers' 87 points were just enough to top the Eagles' 84.

"Close" also counted for both Harvard squads, because that's about where Crimson athletes had hoped to finish. Rather than shooting for team victories in the GBC's, the Harvard men and women planned to use the Championships as a yardstick to gauge how prepared they are for the upcoming Heptagonals.

Measuring Up

"We came off pretty well," Coach Frank Haggerty said of his squads' performances. Harvard found that it is in as good--if not better--shape than it had hoped. Not only did the team's stars come through with their usual strong performances, but some new faces showed that they could help Harvard down the road in a few weeks.

Senior middle-distance runner Cliff Sheehan made a triumphant return to the intercollegiate track circuit. Competing in his first meet of the season, Sheehan (who was on leave doing research last term) won the mile and 1000-meter races, and was voted the meet's most outstanding performer.

In the mile, Sheehan led fellow Crimson athletes Mark Foley and Bill Pate to a sweep of the top three places. Haggerty wasn't surprised by Sheehan's performance: "It's bad to take people for granted," he said, "but I figured he would win both races."

Pate pulled off the most fantastic finish of the Championships in the 880-yd. run. Trailing Northeastern's Ed Urquiola by four yards rounding the final turn, he made up the distance in the last 40 yards, chesting out Urquiola by one-hundredth of a second for the win.

Harvard's Jenny Stricker destroyed the field in the women's two-mile race on her way to a meet-record, 10:06.56, performance Stricker led from the start and lapped half the field on her way to the win.

The real race was for second place--and the Crimson's Lots Brommer won that one with a time of 10:37.9, holding off the challenge of B.C.'s Gina Braz.

Breaking from conventional track strategy, Haggerty refrained from "doubling" or "tripling" his athletes in the Championships, entering fewer than usual in more than one event.

"The other teams did a lot of doubling and tripling," Haggerty said. "I didn't want to do that at all yet. We'll save the tripling for the Heps."