Although they may have been on the same side at last week’s meet against Oxford and Cambridge, the Yale and Harvard track teams returned to their traditional rivalry this weekend. The Yale men bested the Harvard men 105-54, while the Bulldog women fell to the Crimson women 101-61 at the annual dual meet in Cambridge, Mass.
Teaming up with league rival Harvard, Yale’s track team took on the British duo of Oxford and Cambridge this weekend in the oldest continuous international amateur competition in the world.
In addition to their usual collegiate competitors, Elis had to battle windy weather at two different track meets this weekend.
This past Saturday, the women’s and men’s track teams brought in the new year by hosting the College Invitational in New Haven. The meet showcased races against Southern Connecticut State, the University of Connecticut, Albany, Fordham, the University of New Haven and many other North Eastern schools.
In the last weekend of competition before the two-week hiatus that precedes the Heptagonal Championship, several members of the men’s and women’s track teams had the opportunity to gauge their performances against some of the nation’s top competitors.
At the Yale-Harvard dual this weekend, both Crimson and navy blood was shed.
Splitting the teams to compete in two separate meets last week focused the attention of the men and women’s track and field teams on their individual events, and three Bulldog runners transformed that attention into standout performances over the weekend.
On opposite sides of the Mason-Dixon line, half of the members from the men’s and women’s track teams competed in the Sam Howell Invitational at Princeton while the other half traveled to Williamsburg, Va., for the Colonial Relays at William and Mary.
With 15 mph winds and wind chills in the upper 20s, the men’s and women’s outdoor track and field teams may have hummed a line from “California Dreamin’” as they competed at the Southern Connecticut Owl Invitational on Saturday.
Abandoning the Northeast cold, the men’s and women’s track and field teams spent their spring breaks training for a week in Southern California and wrapped up their Golden State trip over the weekend by competing at the UC-Irvine Spring Break Collegiate Classic.
The Frank Shorter ’69 track felt the burn of blazing runners at the two-day Giegengack Invitational, where it witnessed a new meet and facility record set in the mile run. Jared Bell ’09 ran the mile in 4:08.07 for a fourth-place finish and an IC4A qualifying time, but running in under four minutes, Andrew Bumbalough of Georgetown took the prize with a time of 3:58.46.
Setting Yale and personal records was a reccurring theme at the men’s and women’s track and field teams’ non-scoring meet at the Boston University Terrier Invitational this weekend, where both Bulldogs squads displayed all-around strong performances.
