Tracksters Lose Heps Meet Despite Fine Personal Efforts

"Everyone ran well, just not well enough," quipped thinclads manager Sue Barton '82, as Harvard had to settle for a sixth place tie with Dartmouth in the Heptagonals held at Penn Saturday.

Facing their stiffest competition of the season, the men tracksters ran up against powerhouses Penn, Army, and Princeton and fell quickly down to earth after an inspired victory in the GBC's of last week.

The Heps are traditionally a bad meet for Harvard, coming as they do smack in the middle of reading period, and, to add more excuses, the 85-degree heat and punishing track surface didn't help matters. However, the thinclads did turn in some fine performances,including several personal bests, to sweeten the return trip back to Cambridge, where the world of the deadline takes precedence over the world of the finish line.

The weekend began with a bad omen as the tracksters travelled down to Penn a day early for Friday night's qualifying trials--promptly cancelled without the anticipated overflow expected for the meet--and the restless Crimson had to spend an unnecessary 24 hours in Philly. W.C. Fields would have been sympathetic.

The meet began with the arduous 10,000 meter run, and while freshman Bruce Weber knocked 20 seconds off his previous best time he couldn't make the top five finishers. Classmate Kim Stephens, representing Harvard's best hope for a first in the 400 meter hurdles, pulled a hamstring in Tuesday's practice and, after his four-medal performance last weekend in the GBCs, had to watch lamely from the sidelines.

Fellow hurdler Lance Miller didn't fare much better as he reinjured his leg going over the first hurdle and limped the rest of the race home in 60-plus seconds.

Miller had to suffer good-natured abuse from teammates on the ride home who chanted in unison. "Three cheers for Lance Miller. Three cheers for Lance Miller. He would have been in it. If he'd broken a minute."

A freak accident startled runners and fans alike in the 200-meter run. Harvard's Marc Chapus sprung out of the blocks and in the same motion dislocated his left shoulder. Without slackening his pace, the gutsy Chapus continued to run with dangling arm until the shoulder snapped back into place coming into the stretch, and Chapus cruised home to finish in fifth place.

"It was really crazy," said Chapus. "I didn't know what to do so I just kept running...I was running scared, you could say."

Another unforeseen calamity proved the decision of veterans Adam Dixon and Thad McNulty to "double" their events, and run in both the 800 meter and 1500 meter races. The heat took its toll, and after running the qualifying heats, neither McNulty nor Dixon could finish the 1500.

Bright spots in the meet came from Harvard's field squad, where the season's two most consistent winners, Gus Udo and Tom Lenz, each won their events. Lenz left his competition far behind with a winning toss of 209 ft. 10 in. in the hammer throw, a solid 10 feet farther than his nearest competitor.

Freshman leaper Gus Udo also went unchallenged in the long jump with a winning mark of 23 ft., 8 in., a whole foot beyond the second-place finisher.