After that it was all but over.

Sophomore distance sensation Ian Carswell notched a win for the Crimson in the 5,000 and Harvard clinched the meet before the runners took to the track for the final relay--the 4x400--which Harvard won as well.

"We couldn't have asked for anything more," Henry said. "The seniors had been looking forward to this for weeks."

The seniors were the only ones around when the Crimson last beat the Bulldogs, who had won the last two dual meets.

Women Scorch Yale

Though it had a less dramatic victory, the women's squad had an equally impressive performance against Yale.

The Crimson dominated, more than doubling Yale's score, 100-45.

Harvard won 12 of the 17 events, sweeping the top three places four times.

"We knew that Yale was pretty weak going in," Fitzgerald said. "We knew they were a better team outdoors than indoors. But we pretty much knew that unless there was giant fiasco that we should run away with it pretty easily."

Outstanding individual performances were turned in by junior Karen Goetze, who won the 800 and the 1,500 senior Meredith Fitzgerald, who won the 3,000 and junior Heather McClellan, who won the triple jump and placed second in the long jump.

Beating Yale's big too, but when there's big trip on the line, it's a little bigger."

The Harvard Yale meet for both squads, as well as being an important dual meet and essential tune-up for the Heps, also serves as a qualifier for the biannual Harvard-Yale-Oxford-Cambridge meet to be held in England this summer.

The official squads for the meet will be announced later this season, but athletes who picked up victories in Saturday's meet in addition to many second-place finishers likely earned them selves a slot on the meet team.

"The main focus for the meet was beating Yale," Henry said, "but getting to England was a huge, huge incentive."

"The team was really fired up for the race," Fitzgerald said. "There was a lot on the line--trying to qualify for England and trying to beat Yale. That was the reason that this was such a big deal for so many people."