The Harvard cross-country team travels to New York to race today in the Heptagonal Championships in Van Cortlandt Park.

Harvard has a lot of room to improve from its results last year. The men’s team finished in last place while the women’s team placed eighth out of the nine teams that competed. This year, the Crimson men are ready to contend for the title.

“There are four or five teams in the league that have a shot at winning the meet,” said captain John Friedman. “We’re one of those teams. If you ask an objective bystander, we probably would be the favorite, but I think we’re an underrated team.”

After placing second behind No. 8 Providence at the New England Championships two weeks ago, Harvard is poised for an even better performance if all its runners are up to speed.

“We have a really good team performance, it’s in our capability to win,” said sophomore Alasdair McLean-Foreman.

Juniors Nathan Shenk-Boright and Matt Seidel join McLean-Foreman and Friedman at the front of the Crimson pack of expectations for the race.

Defending champion Dartmouth, Princeton and Cornell will be serious challengers, but Harvard is concerned primarily with its own performance.

“We can’t control if the [Cornell runners] have the best races of their lives,” Friedman said. “We can control how we race. If we have good races, other teams will have to run very well to beat us.”

On the women’s side, Harvard will have to overcome a recent injury to sophomore Mairead O’Callaghan in its efforts to succeed today.

“Our forces are a little down,” junior Melissa Tanner said. “That’s a big disappointment, but we’ll all just try to focus on each of us having the best race as possible on Friday and see what happens. We’re trying to be optimistic, but really anything can happen on race day.”

The Crimson women will have to face defending champion Yale, as well as rivals Brown, Columbia, and Princeton.

Two weekends ago the Crimson finished fourth in the New England Championships, ahead of Brown, but the best Bears weren’t running. Harvard already lost to both Princeton and No. 21 Yale on Oct. 6.

“I think that the loss was a little demoralizing,” Tanner said. “So we may have an advantage in that we have the motivation to avenge that loss, but it will be tough without Mairead.”