Siilats Places Tenth at NCAAs

The Harvard women’s track team’s domination of the NCAA high jump event ended on Saturday as Harvard senior Kart Siilats placed 10th at the 2002 NCAA Indoor Track Championships at Arkansas.

Siilats won the championship last year in dramatic fashion with a 1.86-meter leap while facing elimination, but couldn’t deliver in the clutch this time. Her best jump was 1.76 meters. Darnesha Griffith of UCLA won the meet at 1.85 meters.

Siilats jumped 1.85 meters herself earlier this year—good for second on the national performance list—but she never cleared that height with any consistency this season.

Harvard had won three of four NCAA high jump competitions between the 2000 and 2001 indoor and outdoor seasons. Dora Gyorffy ’01 won both the 2000 NCAA Indoor title and the 2001 NCAA Outdoor title. Gyorffy, now Hungarian’s top high jumper, leapt 1.97 meters in Stuttgart on March 2. Only two high jumpers in the world have topped that performance this season.