It might not have been the best of days for the Harvard cross country teams, but it wasn’t the worst either.

While the women’s team’s 135 points placed them sixth at the Heptagonal Championships on Friday, a men’s team frustrated by injuries finished in eighth with 180 points.

For the men, the last place result was a disappointment given the talent and individual peaks reached during the season.

In the women’s race, the Crimson finished the day just about where they expected—neither exceeding nor falling short of its team goals by a great amount.

“I’m really happy that we beat both Penn and Brown, and obviously it would have been great if we could have caught a couple more teams,” junior Laura Maludzinski said, “but realistically I think that we should be satisfied with 6th.”

The Ivy League champion—crowned Friday at Van Cortlandt Park in New York—was Columbia in both of the races.

MEN

In a sport where results are directly reliant on the physical condition of the competitor, injuries can completely cripple a team.

For Harvard, to a degree, Friday’s race was plagued by physical problems.

“This past weekend was a huge disappointment for the men’s cross country team,” captain Reed Bienvenu said. “We had a lot of talent on our team this year and...a number of different things went badly and hurt our team performance. ”

Senior Alasdair McLean-Foreman, who finished second in the Ivy League last year and one of the expected challengers for the win this year, has been hampered by a calf injury that has bothered him for much of the season.

On Friday, McLean-Foreman finished 23rd in a time of 25:31.8. Unfortunately for the Crimson, McLean-Foreman’s hurt calf was not the only nagging injury.

“Two of our other top runners had to drop out of the race this last weekend due to injury,” Bienvenu said. “One had an ankle sprain and the other…got stepped on by someone wearing spikes in the back of the leg.”

Bienvenu gave one of his best efforts on the season—improving on his finish last year by six spots and almost half a minute. His placed 11th with a time of 25:05.9—which earned him second team all-Ivy honors.

Harvard’s next best runner placed a distant 45th—freshman Ryan Hafer put in a good personal effort of 26:12.9 to finish third for the Crimson.