W. Crew Falls to Yale But Thrashes Simmons

It figures that Yale would have a turn in its river.

The Radcliffe heavyweight crew ran up against that torturous problem last weekend. The 'Cliffies made a valiant charge at the end but lost to the Eli by a little under a second.

"The start is staggered," heavy weight captain Tilde Hajek said. "We didn't row the first half of the race aggressively enough. Rather than trying to jump out ahead and using the head start to our advantage, we waited until the 1,000-meter mark before we responded."

Radcliffe's charge did not come until the last 30 strokes of the race. At that point, the Radcliffe women were more than six seats behind Yale.

"We really moved on them in the last 200 meters," Hajek said. "If we had another 100 meters in the race, we could have pulled out the win. We're really concentrating on our sprint. We have really developed a strong move for the last little bit."

It would be nice if that strong move in the last little bit came during the last it or so. Hajek feels that Red-cliffe could have won the race if it had been 100 meters longer.

The Radcliffe lightweights, in a rather unusual arrangement, faced both the Simmons lightweight and heavyweight boats and the Boston University third varsity heavyweight boat. Radcliffe destroyed the three other crews, with the second place Simmons heavyweight boat three lengths behind.

"We have an usually fast lightweight four," said lightweight captain Noelle Tune, explaining how Radcliffe could blow away heavyweight boats. "Simmons, for instance, doesn't have the pool of people or the recruits to choose from."

The Radcliffe lightweights face the BU third varsity heavyweights again next weekend. The women's heavies host the BU first varsity. In an interesting twist, the Radcliffe third heavyweights and the Radcliffe first varsity lights will be in the same race.