HEPS track and field, 2014-2015

ivy follower wrote:

A few other thoughts.

1) What happened to Harvard men? All of those charts above had them getting third. They ended up 5th - less than 10 points from next to last.

A few of my thoughts on that:

- two of the Harvard guys who made the 200m final either DNS (Johnson) or got FSed (Moore) - in fact, that whole final was so messed up that only 3 of the initial 8 men who qualified even scored.

- Purnell underperformed in 3k as he did not score

- no Harvard in the SP, and they only got 1 guy to score in the WT. they lost a lot of their throwing talent due to graduation

- they did manage to get 8 qualifiers going into Sunday's finals (outside of the 800m as due to lack of entries, all 9 men signed up qualified for the finals) but not many of them were able to score high. Saretsky seemed happy with this at the start of Day 2 when I talked to him.

Since someone asked, the only videos I know of are some interviews that Flotrack got of the mid-distance winners up on their website. HTC was not able to get any videos (sorry). I think the Ivy League has some day recap videos on their website, but I haven't checked. I know that there were some videos up on twitter of the men's 3k...

BRF wrote:

What gets me is that Princeton graduated so much talent last spring, and some had suggested they'd have a tough row to hoe this year. Well, their current seniors performed handsomely, but they also got a *ton* of points from frosh/sophs and look very tough for the spring meet--and the future! Well done, PU--credit where it's due.

BRF, Cornell graduated some heavy hitters themselves. I don't follow the league that closely any more but did look at things the week of the meet. When I heard Gibson and Hairston were out, I was like "How in the world is Cornellon paper right there with Princeton - it seems like the whole team is gone from last year." I think someone told me Cornell was running something like just 12 guys that competed last year.

Anyway, here's out it was basically a dead heat on paper heading into the meet..

I just did the math and found that Cornell scored 73 points from seniors last year. That's a ton. Princeton had 48.

If you add in the fact that Hairston scored 16, Gibson 6, and Olloqui 4, then Cornell lost 99 points from the year before. 73 for reasons out of their control. 26 that potentially been prevented but good luck winning if you are missing 99 points from the year before.

Last year not counting relays, the score was Cornell 143 - Princeton 102. Removing the seniors, it was 70 to 54 Cornell over Princeton. But take out the injured guys and it's Cornell 44 to Princeton 54.

Flotrack released a NCAA entry listing this afternoon (I don't think it is final because there is a note saying that coaches can still scratch athletes until 9pm CT tonight). The list of Ivies going to NCAAs, according to Flotrack, are the following:

PV 13 Grant Sisserson SO Cornell 5.47m

SP 16 Stephen Mozia SR Cornell 19.35m

3k 12 Dana Giordano JR Dartmouth 09:07.3

5k 15 Megan Curham SO Princeton 16:01.5 (mark from Heps)

SP 9 Nikki Okwelogu SO Harvard 17.12m (mark from Heps)

TJ 5 Nadia Eke SR Columbia 13.32m (mark from Heps)

I was surprised (in a good way) to see that Sisserson and Mozia made the cut (Mozia is having a slightly sub-par season compared to last year), but a little saddened that Barowski (800m) and Awad (3k) did not make it.

Ivy grads or former Ivies that also made this cut:

Mile 7 Sammy Silva SR New Mexico 04:33.5

3k 2 Will Geoghegan SR Oregon 07:45.7

5k 8 Will Geoghegan SR Oregon 13:43.2

DMR 12 Oregon 09:32.6 (could feature Geoghegan or Gregorek)

Mile 7 Johnny Gregorek SR Oregon 03:57.5

WT 3 Conor McCullough SR USC 23.60m

link -

http://www.flotrack.org/coverage/252006-NCAA-D1-Indoor-Championships-2015/article/30202-ENTRIES-NCAA-D1-Indoor-Championships

Now that indoor is over & the Ivy League competitors had a great season, what about outdoors? How are things looking so far?

By the end of this weekend, each school will have at least one competition under their belts.

Brown and Dartmouth are scheduled to be at the Raleigh Relays, while Cornell and Harvard are scheduled for the Texas Relays. Penn, Columbia, and Princeton will be sticking closer to home this weekend. Yale has off this weekend, but I feel they had a good debut last weekend at the Point Loma Invite.

Princeton women have 3 NCAA leaders right now:

Julia Ratcliffe - 207-08 in the hammer.

Megan Curham - 34:07.08 in the 10k (it's early)

Elizabeth Bird - 10:24.43 in the steeple (it's early)

Bumping this thread since a lot has happened in the past few weeks. Some highlights:

- Awad 13:33 for #2 Ivy all time at Stanford. Second time in recent years that the 1985 record has been threatened (Dan Lowry of Brown ran 13:34 in 2012), but it's proving itself hard to take down... Awad is only a junior however, so perhaps Stanford 2015 may be the time.

- Megan Curham (Pr) was pretty unstoppable in XC and indoor long distance events this year, but Caroline Kellner (Cor) ran 33:32 in the 10k at Stanford. Could we see another LSD showdown between the two like Kellner's older sister, Katie, had with Olivia Mickle in 2013? (Heps 10k came down to 0.2 seconds)

- Not often that a reigning Heps champ isn't the fastest guy in his event on his own team, but that's the situation Connor Claflin (Col) finds himself in after Florida Relays. His teammate, Heps 1k champ Brendan Fish, ran 1:48.13 to Claflin's 1:48.79... not surprising though, given Columbia won 800 through mile and the 4x880 at Indoor Heps.

- Expect to see a lot of red and crimson on the podium in the women's long sprints at Heps... the top 3 times in the 200, 400, and 400H are all held Harvard or Cornell women.

I don't know quite as much about the field events, but my general sense is that the field events (Ratcliffe notwithstanding) have been a bit slower to get rolling this season. I imagine that's mostly a side effect of a late-blooming spring in the Northeast, however.

chaserofsteeples wrote:

I don't know quite as much about the field events, but my general sense is that the field events (Ratcliffe notwithstanding) have been a bit slower to get rolling this season. I imagine that's mostly a side effect of a late-blooming spring in the Northeast, however.

New women's discus record set by a Brown frosh (Josie Vatrasaveschi) of 176-05 (if I'm spelling the name correctly). Mark ranks her 10th nationally.

Eve Bishop (Cornell) inching towards 13-0 for outdoors in the pole vault. She cleared 12-10 1/2 in her first meet of the season out in California.

Nadia Eke (Columbia) triple jumped to 43-06 1/2, making her #3 in the nation and #3 in the Ivy record books.

Sam Mattis (Penn) is second nationally in the discus with 197-10 from the Florida Relays, ahead of Mozia by 5 feet. Mozia ranked 19th nationally in the shot put with 61-06 1/4.

Ratcliffe is currently 5th in the nation right now. Harvard's Okwelogu has yet to compete.

Expected to see a little more chatter re outdoors!

Anyway, looks like Penn Relays will be "meh" as far as competitive conditions, with rain on Wednesday and cool temps/breezes throughout.

I don't see much point in doing a virtual scoring of outdoor Heps at this point--despite iffy weather, there should be a lot of updated performance marks at Penn--so I just took a look at the Ivy performance list:

http://www.tfrrs.org/lists/1522.html

In fact, I just filtered for the Princeton and Cornell men, since one of those is pretty likely to be Heps champ. Again, I didn't tally them up--but purely impressionistically, I'd say Princeton is a good favorite to win outdoors, as it did in. Not a blowout for the Tigers, I'd say, and the meet could be undecided well into the second day, but it looks like PU has the guns. Great example: in the shot, Cornell's Mozia is over 20m, but the next three on the list are Tigers. That's 10 points for CU, 18 for PU. Et cetera.

And Princeton seems to be doing a little sandbagging so far with its mid-/distance guys, once again. So: the two seem even-steven in the throws and jumps (slight edge there to Princeton, maybe), and PU seems a bit ahead on the track--again, just eyeballing it. But it'd be great if the meet came down to the 4x4, where the two teams' best times are currently separated by .02!

Anyway, I'm sure someone (fun.?) will do a preview, once Penn is behind us. Speaking of previews, I miss the looks at throws that shazzuy used to produce. Those were great, and there should be some *fantastic* throwing at Heps this year! I urge everyone to take those in--we're talking national-level performers in almost every event, men and women!

By the way, I did take a look at the women (again, no tallies). Should be a good competition there (and the Penn results may tell us more), but it's hard to pick against Harvard right now. Looks like maybe Columbia and Princeton will give the Cantabs the hardest tussle.

And is the women's 3,000 *finally* gone from the outdoor meet? A mild woohoo, if so...

Ivyguy wrote:

And is the women's 3,000 *finally* gone from the outdoor meet? A mild woohoo, if so...

Yes, it is.

Schedule here -

With Penn's results finally showing on tfrrs, I'll try to do another virtual scoring for the outdoor Heps. (There's another weekend between the two meets, but experience shows that it doesn't shake things up too much.)

I just took a quick scroll through the men's and women's top tens--purely impressionistically, there seemed to be a lot of Princeton and Harvard and a surprising (to me) amount of Dartmouth. Penn and Columbia were well represented, too. We'll see...

BTW I'm actually kind of enjoying the absence of chatter in this thread, though a few hints of individuals-to-watch (posted by people with some actual knowledge) would be interesting.

Okay, I'll spare us all the usual caveats. Check earlier posts if you have questions on procedure.

For the MEN:

Individual track: Penn 59, Columbia 47, Brown and Princeton 42, Harvard 39, Cornell 34, Yale 32, Dartmouth 14

Field: Cornell 74, Princeton 61, Penn 36, Dartmouth 30, Harvard 21, Brown 19, Yale 7, Columbia 0

Relays: Penn 20, Brown 19, Cornell 18, Columbia 12, Princeton 11, Dartmouth and Harvard 4, Yale 2

Decathlon: Cornell 12, Princeton 10, Dartmouth 6, Harvard 2, Penn 1

Totals minus relays and dec: Cornell 108, Princeton 103, Penn 95, Brown 61, Harvard 60, Columbia 47, Dartmouth 44, Yale 39

Totals including relays and dec: Cornell 138, Princeton 124, Penn 116, Brown 80, Harvard 66, Columbia 59, Dartmouth 54, Yale 41

Thoughts:

It appears that Penn, as many anticipated, is moving toward making Heps a Big Three rather than Big Two. And they'll be at home, which generally seems to be a genuine advantage.

But Princeton will (nearly) be at home, too--not an onerous commute from one campus to the other--and often performs well when Penn hosts.

In fact, though I really think the meet could come down to the last couple events, I'm going to take a small risk and predict Princeton for the win. The projected points for both Cornell and Penn depend on unlikely contributions from single athletes; and I'd say Princeton is likely to score more than 11 points in the three relays, wouldn't you? It should be a great competitive meet, though, with event winners coming from a bunch of schools.

Thanks for doing this calculation. It's always interesting to analyze.

I also feel that Princeton will rise up in the individual track scoring as they usually have some of their guys debut in the 5k/10k at Heps, and with them having the strongest and deepest distance corp of the conference, they will pull away from Cornell and Penn once those events are done.

I also expect Brown and Dartmouth to eat a little more into those decathlon scores. Rhodes hasn't done a decathlon yet, and Robinson should have a top 3 showing at Heps (well, I think he would anyways).

Columbia needs to get some male field eventers! It's not like their coaches can't produce - just look at the women field eventers (they could use more women throwers, but their jumpers are all in scoring or near scoring contention).

[quote]kibitzer wrote:

And here's the WOMEN:

Individual track: Harvard 81, Columbia 52, Princeton 49, Cornell 45, Yale 30, Dartmouth 27, Brown 18, Penn 8

Field: Harvard 56, Columbia 36, Brown 34, Cornell 30, Penn 28, Dartmouth 26, Princeton 25, Yale 12

Relays: Cornell 26, Dartmouth 18, Harvard 16, Penn 14, Princeton 10, Columbia 6, Brown 3, Yale 0

Heptathlon: Harvard 16, Penn 8, Dartmouth 7

Totals minus relays and hept: Harvard 137, Columbia 88, Cornell 75, Princeton 74, Dartmouth 53, Brown 52, Yale 42, Penn 36

Totals including relays and pent: Harvard 169, Cornell 101, Columbia 94, Dartmouth 78, Princeton 74, Penn 58, Brown 55, Yale 42

Thoughts:

*With by far the most projected points in the individual track events AND in the field, Harvard once again is in the catbird's seat. And if they needed to, they could put together a pretty good 4x8--haven't contested the event yet. But they won't need to.

*The struggle for second place should be a fine one, but I'm picking Columbia. Cornell's slight edge in projected total score comes from a 20-point bulge in the relays, where Columbia has the potential to pick up many more than its currently-projected 6.

*Hope for the future? Well, Harvard does graduate a *bunch* of points, but returns more; and Cornell/Columbia also will be hit pretty hard by graduation. Princeton may be the one to make the big upward move next year. But big enough to unseat the Cantabs? I really doubt it.

Like the men, I think Princeton still has a lot in the tank that they haven't shown off yet, particularly in the distances and multievents. Taylor Morgan has been focusing more on the individual components than a whole multi so far this season. The question is how many events she'll contest - I think she did two at Indoor Heps, but I'd have to look back at the results.

I think the runner-up battle will be between Columbia, Princeton, and Cornell.

This is THE WEEK--thoughts?

HepsTrack has put their scoring lines out.

Men:

1 – Cornell, 129 (1st/+4 points)

2 – Princeton, 126 (2nd/+22 points)

3 – Penn, 109 (3rd/+19 points)

4 – Harvard, 59 (5th/-12 points)

5 – Brown, 57.5 (6th/-9.5 points)

6 – Columbia, 53 (7th/+12 points)

7 – Dartmouth, 42.5 (4th/-35.5 points)

8 – Yale, 41 (8th/+18 points)

Women:

1– Harvard, 141 (2nd/+16 points)

t-2 – Cornell, 98 (1st/-31 points)

t-2 – Princeton, 98 (3rd/+16 points)

4 – Columbia, 92.5 (7th/+44.5 points)

5 – Dartmouth, 63 (5th/+7.5 points)

6 – Brown, 52 (4th/-20 points)

7 – Penn, 40 (6th/-12.5 points)

8 – Yale, 35.5 (8th/+4.5 points)

I never put much faith in these numbers, especially given the hurricanes some of these sprint times have been run in. However, it's hard to argue that Harvard is anything but the favorite on the women's side. As far as the men are concerned, I think the smart money is on Princeton, especially after their showing indoors (though I certainly do see the world through Orange-tinted glasses).

Well, the HTC lines are based on scoring out the performance listings. If anything, those scores are kinda just starting points. IMHO, they are usually pretty accurate in terms of the field event finishes but I don't 100% trust them for the track or pole vault events.

I don't think Harvard women will win by 43 points (as you mentioned, the sprint times ARE heavily aided by wind; but some of their top people have not been running as much recently - possible injury factor?) but I think their depth will help them out in the team race.

It's nice to see the Penn men being in the mix though. I don't think Awad will do the 1500/5k double though unless Dolan really thinks it will help him out later in the championship season.

If I could be multiple places at once at Heps, I'd love to be able to watch the throws, particularly the men's discus and women's javelin throw events. Stephen Mozia has said before that the discus is his favorite event, and while he might hold the conference record in it, he has yet to win a discus title. Sam Mattis will be aiming for his 3rd Heps title in the discus and last year, he and Mozia battled for the conference record. It was similar in the women's javelin with Hannah Mayer and Kelsey Hay - Mayer has the record, Hay is the defending champ, and their PRs are separated by only an inch. These events are going to be nail biters.

The 10k and multis are also tough to call in advance. Many people make their season's debuts in those events at Heps.

In previous years a poster named "fun." has done analyses that took into account an athlete's PRs, not just seasonal bests (or seasonal non-marks). If someone does that again, the picture might be clearer.

The Cornell men have had an "interesting" year, starting from the very first indoor meet, but some of their guys seem to be coming around at just the right time. I still think that Princeton is the favorite, but CU (and Penn at home) could make it more competitive than some people seem to think.

On the women's side, I do think that Harvard is going to have to work for this one (but will still get it). Princeton seems like the likeliest challenger.