At the Outdoor Heptagonal Championships at Princeton this weekend, the Harvard women's track team scored 121 points, a full 26-point improvement over last year's third-place finish.

Yet when the final tallies were announced, the women found themselves in third place again, behind two familiar rivals. Brown scored 132 points to win the meet for the fourth year in a row, while Yale tallied 127 to take second place in an exceptionally close meet that came down to the final events.

The eleven-point difference between Harvard and Brown was the closest the Crimson had come to the Bears at Outdoor Heps since 1995. A victory could have been well within Harvard's grasp had a few more results swung its way down the stretch.

The defeat to Yale came as a surprise, considering that the Crimson had humiliated the Elis, 104-50, at their annual dual meet just two weeks before. It was also the first time Yale had beaten Harvard at Outdoor Heps since 1988.

The meet marked the end of an era for Ivy track, as it was the last time that twins and respective team co-captains Brenda Taylor of Harvard and Lindsay Taylor of Brown would face off. The end result was familiar from Indoor Heps in February. Brenda took home the Athlete of the Meet trophy, while Lindsay took home the championship trophy.

The Taylor twins tallied 88 points combined in individual events and relays, and each won two individual titles and one relay.

Brenda Taylor beat out her sister to win the 100-meter dash for the second year in a row. She also won her third consecutive 100-meter high hurdles title in a meet and school-record time of 13.56 seconds in the preliminaries. Sophomore Alayna Miller also placed sixth in the 100-meter hurdles.

Taylor's only individual defeat on the day came in the 200-meter dash. Cornell's Katy Jay, who had come close to beating Taylor in previous sprints, came through this time to win her first individual Heptagonal title.

Taylor, who ran the fastest time in the nation in the 400-meter intermediate hurdles at 56.11 seconds at the Penn Relays last week, did not compete in the event at Heps, and left the door open for sophomore Amanda Shanklin to win her first individual Heptagonal title. Shanklin came close to winning for the Crimson, as she clocked in at a meet-best time of 1:01.67 in the preliminaries. But she could not duplicate her performance in the event's final, where she placed fourth.