Harvard Crews Seek EARC Titles

Virtually the entire Harvard crew program will drive west to Worcester’s Lake Quinsigamond tomorrow for Sunday’s Eastern Association of Rowing Colleges (EARC) Sprints Championships, but the No. 3 heavyweights and the No. 7 lightweights will be facing diametrically opposed situations in their quests for the Eastern title.

The challenge for the heavyweights is simply to live up to expectations, as each of the Crimson’s three varsity eights holds the top seed entering the weekend. Indeed, Harvard’s top two boats are undefeated this season, while the 3V has yet to lose to another 3V.

The lightweights, though, are hoping to sneak up on people, as the first and second crews are seeded seventh and fifth, respectively. Still, the Crimson receives a tremendous boost with the return of co-captain Pat Todd, who has been sidelined all season by a back injury.

Heavyweights

The clear-cut favorites entering the weekend, the Harvard heavyweights will risk their unblemished mark against several strong crews, including Northeastern, Wisconsin, Princeton and Cornell—the second, third, fourth and fifth seeds, respectively, in the first varsity race. The Crimson’s top boat beat the Tigers by six seconds on April 20 to take the Compton Cup and defeated the Huskies by 2.8 seconds two weekends ago to earn the Smith Cup, but it has yet to see either the Badgers or the Big Red.

On paper, the first varsity eight should have no trouble placing in the top two in its heat against sixth-seeded Penn, seventh-seeded Brown, twelfth-seeded Syracuse and thirteenth-seeded Rutgers to qualify for the finals. The Crimson outraced the Quakers by 8.36 seconds and beat the Bears by 4.5 seconds in its first two races of the season. And Harvard has only gotten better, although it still must guard against overconfidence.

“We’re pretty pleased with how things have been going,” captain Wayne Pommen said. “We feel like we’ve only been getting faster, so we’re feeling confident, but we also know it’s a pretty tough race to win.”

Indeed, being the top seed paints a giant bulls-eye on the Crimson’s collective back.

“There are a lot of crews that are setting their sights on us,” Pommen said. “With the league as competitive as it is, you’ve got to be able to put together a great race. If you falter, somebody else is going to catch you.”

The second boat, though, is looking at the top seed as an advantage.

“It’s nice to be ranked first,” sophomore Will Riffelmacher said. “All the other crews are worrying about your speed and you just have to go out and row as well as you can.”

“I’d rather have the opposition thinking about us than about themselves,” sophomore Justin Webb added.

Yet, Harvard’s success might be something of a mixed blessing.

“We’re obviously happy with the performance this season so far,” Webb said. “Along with that, there’s a bit of pressure and nervousness to perform well.”

The Crimson will compete against Brown, Navy, Syracuse and BU in its heat, but, if things go according to seeding, its biggest challenge will come from Cornell, Princeton, Northeastern and Wisconsin—the second through fifth seeds, respectively—in the final.

The Eastern championship isn’t the only honor on the line, either. With a win this weekend, either of the first two varsity boats would earn the opportunity to compete in the prestigious Royal Henley Regatta in England.

Earlier Sunday morning, the third varsity eight will have to beat either fourth-seeded Princeton, fifth-seeded Brown or eighth-seeded Penn to advance to the finals.

Both freshman eights are seeded second—the top crew behind Princeton and the second behind Navy—but, while the first boat must finish in the top two to reach the finals, the second boat needs only a top-three finish. The former will see fifth-seeded Yale, eighth-seeded Dartmouth, eleventh-seeded Wisconsin and fourteenth-seeded Syracuse in its opening race, while the latter faces third-seeded Northeastern, sixth-seeded Yale and seventh-seeded BU.

Lightweights

In contrast to the heavyweights, the Harvard lightweights, despite being the defending national champions, are decided underdogs this weekend. But the Crimson will be able to rely on its full complement of rowers—including Todd, who competed in last summer’s FISA World Rowing Championships in Lucerne, Switzerland—for the first time this season in its quest to upset No. 1 Yale.

Todd isn’t the only Crimson oarsman who appears to be healthy after struggling with injuries earlier in the year. Both junior Nick Blannin and sophomore Alex Binkley have returned to racing within the last few weeks and have seen marked improvements in their fitness of late. Todd, too, feels ready to compete.

“I’m in great shape,” he said. “I was actually kind of surprised by how quickly my body’s adapted.”

But Todd doesn’t just bring his physical prowess to the boat; his experience is also unparalleled among Harvard rowers. Indeed, he probably knows better than any other Crimson competitor what it will take to win a race of this magnitude.

“You need to execute,” he said. “But also you just need to be aggressive and attack. You can’t win a race, especially on the lightweight level, by rowing passively.”

Yet, crew, more than most other sports, relies on the unity of a team, so is it fair to look to Todd as a savior?

“We expect a lot,” co-captain coxswain Joe Finelli said. “He’s a great rower. There are seven other rowers in the boat, but it’s going to help a lot.”

“There is no doubt that Pat is an excellent rower,” sophomore Alex Binkley wrote in an e-mail. “But more importantly Pat’s return means that we have a full team again, [which] is particularly important in the middle of a race when it comes time for us to go. There will never be a doubt in any rower’s mind that we are attacking with everything and everyone we have.”

Whether Todd’s return has spurred them or not, the Harvard rowers have made significant strides recently, in part due to practicing longer pieces.

“I can’t tell you why, but one of the things we’ve discovered over the last two weeks is that we just respond well to it,” Finelli said. “It’s not like we weren’t working hard before; we were just inefficient. Based on the amount of work we had been putting in, we hadn’t been getting out nearly as much as we would expect.”

Now, the Crimson finally feels like it is reaching its potential. Still, even Finelli admits the revitalized eight remains untested.

“What we have going right now is not like anything we had going before this,” he said. “We’re a new boat. We’re a lot faster and we really don’t know how we stack up against other programs. We just know how we used to stack up.”

The Crimson’s first test will come in its heat against second-seeded Navy, third-seeded Princeton, sixth-seeded Georgetown, tenth-seeded Penn and eleventh-seeded MIT. Harvard beat both the Quakers and the Engineers in the first two weeks of the season, by 3.7 and 10.9 seconds, respectively, but fell to the other three by 9.6, 4.5 and 4.15 seconds, respectively, later in the year. The Crimson will need to beat one of those three, along with Penn and MIT, to earn a berth in the final. Finelli, for one, thinks it can.

“They say it’s our job to peak for Sprints,” he said. “And I feel like we’re in a position to do that.”

For the second boat, the story is much the same; again, Eastern Sprints are a chance to resuscitate what has been a disappointing season thus far.

“The way the sport works is that whoever wins the championship is the champion,” said junior Dan Koski-Karell. “It doesn’t matter if you got beat the entire season. Our season would totally be a success if we win Sprints because that just means, at the end of the season, you’re the fastest boat.”

In fact, Harvard is planning to use its low seeding to its advantage.

“It’s very demoralizing in the middle of a race if you’re the #2 crew and you see the #7 crew hanging with you,” Koski-Karell said.

“We lost to the four teams ahead of us, so it’s not surprising that we’re seeded fifth,” sophomore Chris Gerry added. “But, at the same time, crews above us better not take us for granted, because we’ve gotten faster.”

The Crimson will need to finish no lower than third in its All-Ivy heat—comprised of top-seeded Yale, fourth-seeded Cornell, eighth-seeded Columbia and ninth-seeded Penn—to reach the finals. Harvard has yet to race Columbia, but it is the Crimson that hopes to sneak up on opposing crews.

“We’re not expecting any surprises,” Koski-Karell said. “We’re expecting to be the surprise for other boats.”

The first and second Harvard freshman boats are seeded sixth and third, respectively. A top-three finish in its heat against second-seeded Yale, third-seeded Penn, seventh-seeded Columbia, tenth-seeded Georgetown and eleventh-seeded MIT will allow the first boat to advance to the final, while the second eight faces second-seeded Cornell, sixth-seeded Penn and seventh-seeded MIT in its opening race.

Yet, while they’re attacking from different angles, both the Crimson heavyweights and lightweights have the same goal in mind. Each wants an Eastern Sprints Championship and bragging rights on Lake Quinsigamond, even if they can’t quite say it.