Women Place at Easterns

Placing in four of seven events, the women's track team raced to a 23rd-place finish, tops among Ivy League competitors, in this weekend's Eastern Championships.

Fleet-footed freshman Darlene Beckford paced the Crimson with a first-place finish in the 800-meter run. Dropping from her usual 1500-meter event to compete against Georgetown star Chris Mullin, Beckford outdistanced the older runner by nearly a second and finished the race in 2:07.51.

Ellen Hart improved on her previous personal best by 50 seconds as she strained for a second-place mark in the 10,000-meter event. Hart's time of 35:01 was nearly three minutes better than the third-place runner's clocking.

In the 1500-meter run, Kristin Linsley also turned in a personal best, finishing sixth with a time of 4:31.75. It was the first major tournament in which she has placed.

But Linsley tasted victory again later, when she and the rest of the two-mile relay team--Beckford, Martha Clabby and Becky Rogers--placed fourth with a time of 9:05.69.

"It was really a very successful weekend for each of them," John Babington, assistant women's track coach, said yesterday. "They outdid themselves and there were also some pleasant surprises."

Among those pleasant surprises were the performances of both Wiley McCarthy and senior co-captain Sue Harper. McCarthy took tenth in the 5000-meter event, finishing with a personal best of 17:52.

Harper claimed 14th in the pentathlon, scoring 2750 points.