Freshmen Oarsmen Get Better of Brown in Providence

Brown's ego was shattered Saturday when Harvard's freshman heavyweight crew rowed to a length-and-a-half victory in Providence.

Brown heads bowed in the agony of defeat after Harvard's first boat continued rowing past the finish line of the 2000 meter race. Harvard had humbled what could prove to be its biggest competition.

"We're ready to go two-out-of-three," a Harvard oarsman said in the boathouse afterward.

The freshmen first boat missed beating the Brown course record by only two seconds, finishing in 5:26. But course times are hard to compare because weather conditions, particularly wind, play such a large role in race times.

"There are no egos like there are in crew," freshman heavyweight Owen West said.

The egos of Brown's oarsmen were undoubtedly humbled yesterday when the freshman first boat beat them by half a boat's length of open water.

In addition, the freshman second boat beat the Brown second boat by more than a length of open water, and one of the three freshman fours beat Brown by about three seconds.

Cheers from Harvard's first boat were hushed as the Crimson crew celebrated in silence. "It wasn't a very dramatic thing at the end," said George Henry, a member of the freshman first boat. "In the past Harvard crews have antagonized Brown because the rivalry is so fierce. We're a quiet crew."

The crew team has been preparing for its season since the first week of school. More than 700 hours went into preparing for less than six minutes of race time Saturday. Everyone in the boat must push themselves 150 percent for those few minutes. As West marked, "There are no halftimes to regroup."

To psyche themselves for the race different rowers have different styles. "You go out quietly, put your boat in the water and hammer it down there. It's not like football, you know, where you yell and scream and bang your head on a locker," explained Hugh Silk, a freshman rower who will miss the remainder of the season because of a back injury.

Harvard's first boat went out with a stroke rate somewhere between 40 and 42 strokes per minute. Brown began somewhere over 45, a rate which generally lasts about 20 strokes (or 200 meters) into the race at which point each team settles at around 36. "They were way too high for themselves," first boat coxswain Travis Metz said.

Harvard's first team had expected Brown to try to get a jump off the line, but then Harvard expected to row through. "We moved out right after the settle," Metz said. The Bruins never had the chance to take the lead and before they knew it, it was all over.

Brown focuses on keeping its rate high. Harvard focuses on power, according to Silk. "The race was basically over when we took our standard power 20 just after the 1000 meter mark," Metz said.

Metz criticized Brown's strategy of keeping its stroke rate so high, saying, "Sometimes you have to take the stroke rate down so that you can go faster. The important thing is efficiency."

The coxswain decides along with the stroke, who rows in the first seat facing the cox, where to keep the stroke rate depending on how the race is going and how the rowers feel. In Saturday's race, Hugh Evans rowed portside stroke. The stroke has to be smart, in order to sense when members of the boat can be pushed, and also aggressive enough to know when they must be pushed.

In beating Brown, Harvard showed how strong it is going to be in the future, since the composition of the Crimson's first boat had been decided just a week before. "It showed a lot of promise," Evans said. "We had only been rowing together for three or four days."

"It was great, but it really didn't look that different from practice," said Fred Borchelt, the freshman coach who replaced Ted Washburn in the fall and rowed with the silvermedal winning 1984 Olympic team.

"We had heard going into the race that Brown had a very fast crew and expected to beat us," West said. "They had their boat together four weeks before the race. If we push as hard as we can every practice, we're not going to get any slower. There's nothing to do but improve."