Season Ends on a Low Note

Three weeks after ending an eight-year drought at Eastern Sprints, the Harvard varsity lightweights saw another streak come to an end on Saturday at IRAs.

This snapped streak didn’t take them to the winner’s circle, however, as the lightweights finished fourth in the final and failed to win a national championship in an odd year for the first time since 1989.

“We didn’t have a particularly bad piece,” junior two-seat Wes Kauble said. “We just didn’t have a championship-quality piece.”

The Crimson had captured seven national titles during the run, including three wins in 1999, 2001, and 2003 that followed disappointing finishes at Eastern Sprints.

One streak seems to be on-going—Harvard has been unable to win both a Sprints crown and a national title in the same year since 1997.

And it was in Camden, N.J., that the Crimson finally relinquished the No. 1 ranking it had clung to after a thrilling 0.2 second win over Yale at Eastern Sprints.

That same Yale crew—a boat had jumped Harvard off of the start in the teams’ previous two meetings—finally held the advantage for a full 2,000 meters on Saturday. After relinquishing a four-seat lead in the Harvard-Yale dual race and a near boat length margin at Eastern Sprints, Yale took off and never let up.

In the weeks before the race, senior six-seat Dave Stephens said, “I am much more worried about Yale than about Navy. They stayed ahead of us a lot longer than any boat has all year.”

Stephens was right to be concerned, as the Bulldogs exacted revenge on a Harvard boat after a bow ball to bow ball Sprints finish that went the Crimson’s way.

“Yale got out to an early lead like they have in the past,” Kauble said. “Unfortunately, we were just unable to fight back. We went to make a move and didn’t gain any ground. That’s the tale of the race.”

It was a disappointing 2,000 meters for the Crimson, which had turned in an exceptional morning heat to qualify for the final. Harvard, the regatta’s No. 1 seed, enjoyed one of its best starts of the season and beat second-place Navy by close to four seconds.

The Crimson finished the morning heat in 5:59.61 and Navy followed in 6:03.14.

“Our morning race was championship-quality and what we wanted,” Kauble said. “The morning race set a good tone for the afternoon race, but we weren’t able to take the morning race and build on it.”

The second heat was far closer and placed Yale, Cornell, and Penn in the final. All three finished with faster heat times than the Crimson.

Harvard could not repeat its fine start from the morning heat and found itself down just after the start. And a boat that had come from behind in every race all season—a boat that had overcome an open water deficit to Cornell and a boat length deficit to Yale at the halfway point once already—came up short for the first time since a dual-season loss to Georgetown on April 10.

The Crimson’s always-reliable base cadence, accompanied by a strong move just after the midway mark, did little to help Harvard catch the Bulldogs. In May, Harvard took off at 1,200 meters and burned Yale by 2.4 seconds on the Charles River.

In June, it was Yale’s turn to one-up the Crimson.

“We went for the surge,” Kauble said. “Obviously it didn’t pay off the way it has in the past.”

The boats crossed the finish line in heat time order, with Yale taking first, Cornell second, Penn third, and Harvard fourth. Yale posted a 5:41.89 time and Cornell followed in 5:43.39, a margin far wider than the 0.1 seconds that separated the Bulldogs from the Big Red for second place at Eastern Sprints. Penn crossed in 5:44.71 and the Crimson came next in 5:45.45, narrowly beating out the Hoyas (5:45.82).

“Cornell and Penn had the best race of the season when they had to have it,” Kauble said. “We wish we would have had the best race at IRAs as well.”

—Staff writer Aidan E. Tait can be reached at atait@fas.harvard.edu.