Last Saturday at Gordon, the Harvard women's track team won its biggest meet of the season thus far by the slimmest of margins.

The Crimson racked up 57 points to edge out Cornell's final tally of 55 and arch-rival Brown's 47. In such a close meet, every top-four finish in the meet's 15 events--eight of which were won by Harvard--became crucial. Co-captain Brenda Taylor led the way with three individual wins and a blinding second leg of the meet-clinching mile relay.

The tri-meet featured the top three teams from last year's Indoor Heptagonals, although each team was missing key personnel this time around. Nevertheless, Harvard's victory bodes well for its prospect of defending its league championship when it hosts the 2001 Indoor Heps in late February.

On the men's side of the action, Cornell took first with 63.5 points to beat out Harvard's total of 55.5, while Brown placed last with 51. The Crimson's wins came from the two-mile relay team, co-captain John Kraay in shot put, senior Chuck Nwokocha in the 60-meter dash, and freshman Tekky Andrew-Jaja in the triple jump.

Harvard Women

With the mile and two-mile relay events left to go, Harvard led Cornell by a slim 52-50 margin, but the Crimson had every reason to expect that its Ivy-best mile relay team would come through.

After taking the baton from sophomore Ashley Furst, Taylor exploded around the first turn and buried her competitors, leaving them at least 50 meters behind.

"It had been a long day for me, and I needed some motivation for the last race," Taylor said. "I found out the score from our coaches, so I knew it was going to come down to the relays. Ashley Furst totally picked up the slack for us in the beginning."