Perhaps the Harvard men’s best chance to win a running event came in the 1,000-meter race, for which senior Alasdair McLean-Foreman had the second-fastest qualifying time in Saturday’s semifinal heats.
Yesterday, however, McLean-Foreman was not able to match that time—nor his Indoor Heptagonals’ winning time of 2:25.94 from last year—and finished in fifth place at 2:28.69.
In the throwing events, sophomore James Ayers scored Harvard’s first point of the competition by notching sixth with a throw of 15.90 meters.
The Crimson produced more points than its competitors in the shot put, as co-captain Kristoffer Hinson took home eight points in second and sophomore Christopher Ware took home one in third by tossing the shot put 16.49 and 16.02 meters, respectively. For Hinson, the mark was almost 0.75 meters better than the mark he registered last year.
Unfortunately, the team could not improve as a whole as much as some individuals like Hinson, Ware, and Laine did, and finished with 15 fewer points than last season.
“Our finish as a team was certainly disappointing, especially since I don’t think anybody on the team trains for merely second place—let alone second-to-last place,” Laine said. “However, our finish can be partly accredited to the fact that we’re just working with such small numbers and, compared to teams like Princeton and Cornell, we can’t amass the points that they can. Aside from that, we can only go back to the drawing board and prepare for the coming season.”
WOMEN
Without a doubt, the Harvard woman who had the best meet was Scherf—with her 5,000-meter, 3,000-meter double that earned Harvard a large chunk of its points.
“Going into Heptagonals this weekends my plan was to run every race with 100-percent effort and the results would take care of themselves,” Scherf said.
On Saturday, Scherf ran 16:23.63 in the 5,000-meter race, good enough for second place overall, and the third-best time in Indoor Heptagonals history. A day later, she followed up that record-setting performance by finishing the 3,000-meter in 9:26.32—good enough for third. Scherf actually led the race on yesterday until the 10th lap, when she was finally passed by Caroline Bierbaum of Columbia—who had beaten her a day earlier in the 5,000-meter run. Lindsay Donaldson of Yale ended up winning yesterday, posting a time of 9:16.97.
“It was so motivational to race here at Harvard in front of a home crowd,” Scherf said. “When my teammates would cheer for me during my race it definitely provided me with an extra boost.”
For the meet, junior Laura Maludzinski was the only other runner to score more than two points and finish in the top three in any event. She came up big for the Crimson by taking third in the mile run. Her time of 4:52 was less than half a second behind race-winner Sarah Coseo of Cornell.
In the field events, Sotonye Imadojemu took fifth place in the triple jump with a mark of 11.46 meters.
Senior Eleanor Thompson registered a sixth-place finish in the 60-meter high hurdles by reaching the line in 8.96 seconds. Similarly, junior Stevie De Groff also grabbed one point for the Harvard by finishing in sixth in the 60-meter dash. She completed the sprint in 7.85 to earn the point.
—Staff writer Gabriel M. Velez can be reached at gmvelez@fas.harvard.edu.