The Harvard men continued to show signs of weakness at the Heps. The men turned in an abysmal last-place finish at Heps, as no Harvard runner was among the top 12 finishers. Navy won the Heps title for the first time since 1992 and was followed by second-place Princeton and third-place Brown.

Indoor Track

If the fall season was a disappointment for the men and mediocre for the women, these roles were reversed during the winter indoor track season.

Carswell and senior Killian Lonergan gave the Crimson fans something to cheer about on the men's teams. Unfortunately, this dynamic roommate duo was not able to lift the entire team over the rest of the Ivy League.

At the Harvard Select Meet on Feb. 1, which also included Boston College, Boston University and Northeastern, Harvard's Kevin Johnson turned in two fine performances by winning the 200 and the 3000.

Harvard's distance medley team, composed of Lonergan, Johnson, freshman Darren Dinneen and Carswell turned in the most outstanding performance of the day as their team captured first place with a time of 9:46.51 and subsequently qualified for the NCAA Championships on March 7-8.

The women captured three first-place finishes in the Harvard Select Meet, with junior Sarah Lodewick winning the triple jump, senior Jessica Mikszewski winning the 5000 meter and the Crimson medley team winning the relay.

A couple of days after the Harvard Select Meet, Carswell turned in an exciting sixth-place finish at the Millrose games in New York on Feb.7. His dazzling time of 7:57.21 broke his own Harvard indoor 3,000-meter record and automatically qualified him for the NCAAs.

The results of the indoor H-Y-P meet was deja vu from the fall. The men placed third behind first-place Princeton and second-place Yale, and the women placed second behind Princeton and a good 13 points ahead of the woeful Elis. Fortunately for the men, they would exact revenge on Yale at Heps a few weeks later.

At the 1997 Indoor Heptagonal Championship on February 22-23, the same nine teams competed as in the fall, but the men avoided a repeat of the last-place finish of the cross-country team. Instead the Crimson captured fourth place in the meet thanks to Carswell's winning times in the 3,000 (8:12.26) and the mile (4:07.23) as well as his role in running the anchor leg for the victorious distance medley team, the same team that had earlier qualified for a spot in the NCAAs.

Carswell's performance at Heps gave him the Outstanding Male Performer award, the first such award for a Harvard male since 1985. Lonergan won the 5,000 in 14:18.55 and was second to Carswell in the 3,000.

The Crimson women could not hold a candle to the top three finishers at Heps: Princeton, Cornell and Brown. The Crimson's 22 points earned it a disappointing seventh-place finish.

The fact that Harvard did not garner a single first-place finish in any event at Heps and had only one second-place result--thanks to senior Ailey Penningroth's 3524;3 in the Pentathlon--certainly did not help the Crimson in the standings.

While the Crimson men's and women's indoor season came to a close, Carswell and Lonergan headed off to the NCAAs to try and become Harvard's first men's NCAA indoor champion in 18 years. Harvard's own Geoffrey Stiles was the 1979 NCAA pole vault champion and Meredith Rainey won the woman's indoor 800-meter event in 1990.

Carswell and Lonergan did not disappoint. Carswell's third-place finish in the 3000 earned him All-American honors while Lonergan's 11th-place finish in the 5000 meant that the Dublin, Ireland native just missed the same honor. The top 10 finishers in an NCAA event are named All-Americans.