Heavyweight Crew Dominates Last Home Race

Risk, the online game that the College Events Board launched across campus this weekend, is a game with the goal of virtual domination.

The Harvard men’s heavyweight crew team, though, has no need of such artificial power plays, for the story of its entire season so far has been one of real-world domination, exemplified in its sweep of the Smith Cup races against Northeastern on Saturday.

In the last home event of the season, the Crimson took first place in every race, often by a wide margin, to once again acquire the Smith Cup. The last time Northeastern won the cup was in 1997.

The varsity eight took an early lead over the Huskies after an impressive start.

“I think we were already ahead after the first 10 strokes,” varsity two-seat Simon Gawlick said.

The Crimson then just kept widening its lead to eventually win by a 15-second margin and several lengths of open water in 6:02.2.

“We were up a length after about 700 meters—and then we opened it up,” Gawlik said. “It was well executed, all in all.”

The second varsity had a similar success story, with an early lead that simply continued to improve.

“We didn’t want to underestimate them—we wanted to stick to above 36 [strokes per minute],” two-seat Winter Mead said. “Within 20 strokes, we had about four seats on them, and we kept pushing and finished with a pretty solid win.”

“It was a good start,” said captain and six-seat Nick Baker. “And then we were able to steadily walk out and then make a strong push in the middle of the race.”

Two Harvard varsity fours also raced against one from Northeastern, producing another successful result with one boat coming in at 7:00.8 to the Huskies’ 7:05.2 and the second Harvard four coming in third in 7:09.0.

The most significant tension of the morning was created by the freshman eight, which had a tight race the whole length of the course.

The Crimson gave itself a few seats’ lead in the first 1000 meters, only to have Northeastern fight back to just ahead by the 1500-meter mark.

But Harvard stayed strong and pushed back in front to win by just over a second, 6:08.2 to 6:09.3.

“It was a pretty tough fight for the whole time,” coxswain Joe Lin said. “But I thought it was great—the guys were saying it was our fiercest race so far.”

Lin also mentioned that it was good preparation for Eastern Sprints next Sunday, where the boats will be racing against a larger, more competitive field.

“The dynamics of a dual race are a lot different from a six-boat race,” he said. “So it was good to get in a really tough race like that.”

The freshman four’s victorious results, with 7:07.9 to Northeastern’s 7:12.5, rounded off the Crimson’s clean sweep of the day’s races.

But the team was already looking ahead to greater things even before the morning’s start, with Eastern Sprints and IRAs coming up in the near future.

“Brown’s our major opponent, so we wanted to use this as a stepping-stone,” Mead said of the JV’s Saturday race. “We went into the race with the mentality that we had Brown next to us and were racing them.”

Gawlik described interesting developments in other races over the weekend that could have implications for the Sprints next week.

“Wisconsin were racing just fifteen minutes after us on the river,” he said. “And they’re the only crew that we couldn’t really compare ourselves with so far because they mostly race other crews on the West Coast.”

Gawlik also mentioned Yale and Brown’s wins over Princeton as proof that the competition at Worcester next week would be tough. But he remained optimistic about the Crimson’s chances.

“I think Brown had some lineup changes since we met them,” he said. “But so did we, and we picked up some speed.”

Baker agreed.

“Everyone is psyched to go out there, and I think we’re starting to get additional speed that we’ve been working for and which we’ll continue to get,” he said. “Brown will be one of the crews to watch for.”

“They will be one of the top boats in the varsity, but also in the JV,” Baker added. “The Brown boat has been the one loss the [Harvard] JV has had, so we’re looking to make up for that.”

One thing is for sure: in this game, whoever ends up on the podium next week, there is very little risk that Harvard won’t be there.

—Staff writer Alexandra C. Bell can be reached at acbell@fas.harvard.edu.