Thinclads Stumble In Heptagonal Meet

The Heptagonal Outdoor Championships, held Saturday and yesterday in New Haven, Conn., are the most important team meets of the season for the men's and women's track teams.

Heps--as the initiated call them--are the key meets of the season; the time for personal bests and strong team performances.

And though the thinclads came through with many outstanding individual efforts, the results still added up to a typical Crimson team finish.

The women's team--led by the consistent performances of its veterans and promising newcomers--placed third, while the men struggled to keep up with their talented opponents in finishing a disappointing eighth in the 10-team field.

Yale, the meet host, won the women's competition with 108 team points, followed by Penn (95) and Harvard (87). Princeton captured the men's title with 130 team points, 100 more than Harvard's 30.

Women Third

Co-Captain Erin Sugrue continued her tremendous season, capturing the high jump and the 100-meter high hurdles, while placing second in the triple jump. Sugrue's winning jump in the high jump was 5-ft., 6-in.--six inches lower than her personal best--while her time in the hurdles was 14.55 seconds.

Sugrue nabbed second place in the triple jump with a leap of 36-ft., 71/2-in., just ahead of teammate Manda Schossberger. The freshman leaped 36-ft., 1/4-in., to capture third in the event.

Freshman phenom Meredith Rainey set a new meet record in the 400-meter run with a time of 53.93, breaking the old record by more than three-quarters of a second and setting a new personal best.

Rainey also copped second in the 200-meter run with a time of 24.93, was edged out at the finish by Dartmouth's Betsy Cuervo, whom Rainey had beaten in a tri-meet at Dartmouth last month.

Freshmen Christine Lount and Lise Vansen turned in strong performances for the Crimson in the distance events. Lount finished fifth in the 3000-meter run and sixth in the 1500-meter run, while Vansen snagged fifth in the 5000-meter race.

"I'm really very, very proud of the results of the women's team," Rainey said. "Everybody gave it their best effort and there were a lot of personal bests. I think we did the best we could have done."

Men Eighth

The men's team has been rebuilding all season, and the team's performance at Heps is representative of its season-long struggle for improvement.

"We're graduating seven seniors," junior James Russell said. "For next year, we're looking at a very young team. I can assume we're only going to improve."

Russell, who qualified for the national championships in the hammer throw last month, finished second in that event with a heave of 196 feet. "It was okay for second place," Russell said.

Senior Paul Kent, a bright spot in a dim year for the Crimson, was the team's only first-place finisher. Kent captured the 1500-meter run with a time of 3:46.06.

Power Failure

Despite the shortage of high finishes, there were a number of strong individual performances for the Crimson. Sophomore Chris Sullivan placed third in the high jump with a personal best 6-ft., 10 1/2-in, while senior Stephen Pinney snared fourth in the pole vault with a height of 14-ft., 8-in., and junior Don LaVigne's time of 54.38 in the 400-meter hurdles earned him a seventh-place finish.

A pair of sophomores had personal bests, as Shawn Carew nabbed eighth-place with his javelin throw of 196-ft., and Maurice Frilot finished fifth with his 48-ft. heave in the shot put.