Saturday’s Harvard track meet against Northeastern wasn’t expected to be a strong day for anyone given that the team had just come back from winter break the prior Thursday.
But that didn’t stop men’s track co-captain Kobie Fuller.
Fuller broke an indoor school record in the 400 with a performance of 48.38 and ran a personal best of 21.98 in the 200 to lead the men’s track team to an 82-63 victory.
The previous record in the 400 was held by Kevin Johnson ’98 at 48.41. Fuller’s performance was just off the indoor record in the 200, held by Shane Mauricette ’96-’97 at 21.91.
Outside of Fuller’s races, performances were not particularly strong, a fact which Harvard Coach Frank Haggerty ’68 attributed to the unusually short week of practice leading into the meet.
“Coming back off such a long break it’s always hard to catch stride, since we have such a long winter break and we don’t train together as a team and everyone’s facilities vary to a degree,” said women’s co-captain Nicky Grant.
The women’s track team won 72-55. Both the men’s and women’s teams were helped out largely by the fact that Northeastern did not bring any strong competition in the longer distances, which allowed both teams to sweep nearly all of those events.
Fuller and junior Matt Seidel, who won the mile and 3000, were double-event winners for the men, while Grant won the shot put and weight throw for the women.
Grant’s performance of 16.75 in weight throw was well short of her expectations. Still, her throw of 18.90 meters against Boston College last month places her second on the national performance lists as of Dec. 24. Amber Campbell of Coastal Carolina is first in the nation at 20.77 meters.
“This [meet] is a wakeup call,” Grant said. “I definitely didn’t perform as well as I should have, but this is just my realization of that fact and I’ll work on that.”
The Crimson now begins another lengthy layoff of three weeks, due to finals. The next meet is Brown-Cornell on Jan. 26.
Brown is the defending women’s Indoor Heptagonal champion, but the Bears have typically struggled at Harvard in this tri-meet.
“That’s always our toughest meet of the year [before Heps],” Grant said. “We realize that and we’ll use that time to train hard and work on the finer techniques of rhythm and our sprinting abilities. We’ll be able to compete with [Brown and Cornell].”
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