Freshmen Performance Marks Tough Weekend

It’s been a tough season so far for the Harvard lightweight crew team. After a third-place finish behind Navy and Georgetown last weekend, the Crimson again found itself finishing last on Saturday morning, this time on the Charles River behind rivals Yale and Princeton.

The Tigers won the varsity race to reclaim the Goldthwait Cup for the first time since 1999, and the Bulldogs were awarded the Vogel Cup, given to the team with the strongest overall performance.

“We knew coming in that Yale and Princeton are ranked one and two in the country,” senior five-seat Matt Young said. “Even so, we thought we had good chances of doing well, but the final margin was definitely kind of disappointing.”

The Crimson’s varsity eight started off the race in a determined fashion, coming off the starting line strong and staying even with Yale while gaining a two-seat lead over Princeton after the opening 20 strokes of the piece.

Despite its fast opening sequence, Harvard was unable to establish a steady rhythm early on in the race. This fault ultimately played a significant outcome in the race’s outcome.

“In the future, we definitely need to work on our rhythm,” Young said. “We’ve definitely got the right guys for the job. We just need to get the rhythm together.”

The Crimson managed to stay in the race for about the first 700 meters, keeping within striking distance of the Bulldogs and Tigers despite being down seats. However, coming through the Mass. Ave. bridge and entering the second half of the race, both the Yale and Princeton crews made their moves to pull away, leaving Harvard in their wake.

“The waters were pretty choppy in the second half of the race, and we just didn’t handle the conditions well,” Young said.

The Crimson finished the race in 5:59.3. The Tigers won the event, clocking in at 5:49.0, and the Bulldogs finished second in 5:51.8.

Harvard’s second varsity crew raced similarly to the varsity eight against its Yale and Princeton counterparts. The Crimson came off the line strong, keeping up with the Bulldogs and the Tigers but ultimately failed to establish a firm base cadence from which to contest the rest of the race.

“Right off the start, all the boats were within a seat or two, but as soon as we hit the settle, Princeton gained a quick lead and those two boats just shot out in front,” sophomore coxswain Dexter Louie said. “The issue was that right from the get-go we were just not able to establish our rhythm. We couldn’t get our blades in the water and get a good pop and send.”

The other boats, rowing with a regular rhythm, were able to walk up and away from the Harvard crew. Yale won the race with a time of 5:55.7, just ahead of Princeton, who finished in 5:56.9. The Crimson came in third in 6:16.7.

“The race was extremely, extremely disappointing,” Louie said. “We were doing very well this week in practice, and I thought the boat was going to take off this weekend, but we just couldn’t put it together. There are no excuses—we just couldn’t deliver under pressure yesterday.”

The freshman crews were the highlights of the day for the Crimson. The freshman eight finished second behind Yale and ahead of Princeton, clocking in at 6:00.7, while the second freshman eight won its event with a time of 6:18.8.

“The freshmen have been extremely exciting this year,” Louie said. “They’re going to add a lot to the team when they come up to the varsity ranks next year.”

Next up for the lightweights is Eastern Sprints, to be held on Lake Quinsigamond in Worcester, Mass. on Sunday, May 18. There, in addition to taking on all the schools in the league, the team will have the chance to re-race many of its dual season opponents.

“We’ve been training six days a week,” Louie said. “We put the time and effort in. Right now the other teams don’t know how fast we are, because we haven’t been able to show it, and that’s not right. [Sprints] will be a good race. It’s always nice to get back at an opponent and see how things have come along.”

—Staff writer Lucy D. Chen can be reached at lucychen@fas.harvard.edu.