Season is heating up for the Ivy schools. Summary of yesterday's five-team meets at Harvard, courtesy of Cornell:
"In a thrilling collegiate track meet that came down to the final event in both the men's and women's team competitions, the Cornell track and field squads took part in the five-team Harvard Select Invitational on Saturday in Cambridge, MA. The meet, which used to be a tri-meet with host Harvard and Brown and Cornell, today also included New Hampshire, the Rhode Island women and the UConn men. Trailing Big East power UConn much of the day, the Big Red men rallied from a 121-80 deficit to place first in the team competition, taking the team lead for the first time in the final event of the day, ending up on top 163-152 as junior Erik Roneker won the men's weight throw with an NCAA Provisional qualifying effort. The women rallied as well, and took the lead after the women's weight throw before placing second to a very good Brown team 144-135 as Brown won two of the final three events of the meet to hand the Big Red its first defeat at the hands of an Ivy opponent in track since 2001."
Men's team scores: CU 163, UConn 152, Brown 74.5, Harvard 48, UNH 25.5; women's: Brown 144, CU 135, Harvard 94, UNH 63.5, URI 55.5. Scored meets are great, aren't they? So much more exciting when there's actually something on the line as the final events approach, and I've gotta think that people who've experienced that kind of situation are going to be better prepared for conference than teams that just take a few folks to non-scoring meets all year.
Results:
http://www.gocrimson.com/ViewArticle.dbml?SPSID=93239&SPID=7392&DB_OEM_ID=9000&ATCLID=1375710
Hard to call the women's score an upset: Brown was expected to have a lot of senior strength, and their great frosh class is making big contributions right away. (Cornell was expected to be down a lot after graduating so many points last year--if anything, their competitiveness comes as a small/nice surprise, and they might add a scorer or two for the Heps meet.) Apparently Craig is doing *some* things right with her program...
Meanwhile, Harvard continues its climb upward, more so on the women's side than the men's. (Pretty typical: Women are more likely to make an immediate impact than men are.) I still think Saretsky is going to have them contending for titles soon.
What's happening with the other Heps teams? Are Princeton's men and women still favorites? Anybody else FTW, on either side? I see that the meet will be in Ithaca this year...