At the Harvard track and field team’s dual meet with Boston College in December, the Crimson decided not to do the traditional post-meet clapping.

After the Crimson men were able to pull out their first dual meet victory in over a year by beating Northeastern by a score of 75-68, the team decided to resurrect its old tradition and engaged in a hearty victory clap.

The victory for the men comes before a long break for tests—the Crimson next competes after finals on Jan. 29.

“We’ve got a really hard month of training ahead so the result on Saturday came at a great time,” co-captain Alasdair McLean-Foreman said. “We’re really motivated from our performance, and everyone’s ready to step up the intensity when we come up against tougher competitors in the next few weeks.”

Saturday was not as bright for the Crimson women as they fell to the Huskies at the Gordon Track and Field Center by a score of 73-54.

“It’s always competitive racing against Northeastern, because they are pretty strong in the sprinting events and some of the field events as well,” co-captain Laura Maludzinski said. “This year, because of our big freshman addition to the team, we are also stronger in the sprinting and field events, so that is why we were able to compete more evenly with them.”

MEN

Last year, Harvard lost to the Huskies by a score of 82-62, but as the meet was winding down this Saturday, the Crimson men found themselves with a chance to pull out the victory this year.

With the meet score at 70-68 in favor of Harvard, the 4 x 800 meter relay would be the deciding factor in the meet.

“We were all cheering for our relay team, and that boosted our team’s solidarity as it’s not often that the relay actually matters, as far as the final score is concerned,” senior Tekky Andrew-Jaja said.

After Harvard had dominated many of the longer running events, it took an early lead and managed to best the Northeastern relay team by almost a full lap of the 200-meter track to complete the long distance domination and secure its first win of the season.

The relay team of freshmen Haibo Lu and Christopher Green, sophomore Sean Barrett and McLean-Foreman may have secured the victory, but Harvard won the meet on the back of its sweep of the long distance events.

The prime example of this strength came in the 3,000-meter race in which Harvard took the top seven spots. Leading the Crimson in the race was sophomore Kevin Lyons—who won the race in 8:45.13.

Barrett won the mile in 4:26.62, while taking second in the 800 meter run—just over two seconds behind Green’s winning time of 1:57.74

McLean-Foreman completed the sweep of the long distance events by winning the 1,000-meter run in a time of 2.34.01, while sophomore Jonathan Paul finished just under two seconds behind him for second place.