M. Track Has Best Finish Since ’83

The seniors of the Harvard men’s track and field team graduate today having led the Crimson to its best season since 1983—an amazing feat considering that the Crimson placed next-to-last in the Outdoor Heptagonal Championships a year ago.

The ascent to third place at Outdoor Heps this year was by no means unexpected. An outstanding fall cross country season and superstar sprinter Chris Lambert’s addition to the roster hinted that this would be a special year for the Crimson.

Though the Crimson shined in the long distances, it was most impressive in the sprints thanks to Lambert and co-captain Kobie Fuller. Lambert, a junior who had won a bronze medal at the World University Games in 2001 but held out from competing on the intercollegiate level for two years, assaulted school records as soon as he toed the track.

At his Crimson debut in January, a crowd of athletes and spectators stopped everything to watch him run, and he did not disappoint, breaking the school record in the indoor 60-meter dash. He extended that record to 6.73 seconds at Indoor Heps.

At Outdoor Heps, Lambert ran times of 10.19 in the 100 and 20.68 in the 200 that would have been Heps records had they not been declared wind-aided. Lambert would have been the team’s lone NCAA qualifier had he chosen to compete.

“Seeing [Chris run], it just gets you more fired up to do the best you can,” Fuller said.

Fuller backed up those words by posting record-breaking times himself throughout the year. He broke the indoor school record in the 400 in December and won Heptagonal titles in the indoor 500 and the outdoor 400. He also topped his personal best in the outdoor 200 by half a second in a second-place finish behind Lambert.

Fuller and Lambert, along with senior Shawn Parker and junior Sean Meeker, made up the Crimson 4x100 relay team in the outdoor season that broke the school record several times—the best performance being a 40.72-second mark in a second-place finish at Heps.

The Crimson long distance runners didn’t shatter records like the sprinters, but they had a vastly improved season nonetheless.

“We were tired of being bad,” said junior Nathan Shenk-Boright.

The team, which had finished last at Heps a year before, improved to fifth at the championship meet this season, and even that was considered a disappointment.

Soon after, though, the Crimson posted an exceptional fourth-place showing at NCAA Northeast Regionals—second among the Ivy teams, and only two places short of what it needed to automatically reach the national championships.

The rapid improvement of Shenk-Boright, who took fifth at Cross Country Heps and 14th at Regionals, and junior Matt Seidel, who placed eighth at Cross Country Heps and 18th at Regionals, was key to Harvard’s success this year, especially at Outdoor Heps. There the pair each achieved top-three finishes in both the 5,000- and 10,000-meter races—an extraordinary feat for anyone doubling up in the two races.

Sophomore Alasdair McLean-Foreman, Harvard’s top finisher at Cross Country Regionals with his 13th-place showing, also took second in the mile at Indoor Heps and third at IC4As but was too injured to compete for most of the outdoor season.

Harvard took fourth out of the nine teams at Indoor Heps and ninth out of 55 point-scoring teams at IC4As despite sending just five athletes to the latter meet.

“Initially we were going to run fast as individuals, but then we pulled together as a team,” said junior John Traugott of the team’s IC4A performance. Traugott won third in the 1,000 at Indoor Heps, second in the 1,000 at IC4As and fourth in the 1,500 at Outdoor Heps.

On the field, no one could step up and match the contributions of Heptagonal champion Chris Clever ’01 or captain John Kraay ’01 in the throws.

But senior David Grimm did manage to score points at his final Outdoor Heps, and senior D.J. Patterson topped off an injury-plagued career in style by winning the discus with a 50-meter throw at Outdoor Heps. At Outdoor IC4As, the team’s final meet, Patterson was the lone Harvard athlete to score, with a fourth-place finish.

“[Patterson] has been improving a lot this year,” said co-captain John Cinelli. “Guys had been saying he had been throwing well over 50 meters in practice. It was just a matter of him putting it together in a meet.”

Such was characteristic of the men’s track team all year—constantly improving and coming through when it counted the most.

MEN'S TRACK & FIELD

RESULTS 5th at Cross Country Heps, 4th at Indoor Heps, 3rd at Outdoor Heps

COACH Frank Haggerty ’68

CAPTAINS John Friedman (Cross Country), John Cinelli, Kobie Fuller (Indoor and Outdoor Track)

HIGHLIGHTS Cross Country places fourth at NCAA Regionals. Junior Chris Lambert posts school record times in the 100 and 200 and anchors the 4x100 relay.