No. 2 Men's Lightweights Falter, Fall to Fifth at IRAs

Two and a half weeks ago, Harvard’s men’s crews pulled off a rare one-two punch at the EARC Eastern Sprints, returning to Cambridge with heavyweight and lightweight points cups for the first time since 1980.

Unfortunately, they weren’t able to commemorate such a successful season in similarly sweeping lockstep at the IRA Regatta in Camden, N.J.

While the heavyweights dominated, the men’s lightweight team went down fighting—against the elements, the opposition and themselves. The lights finished a disappointing fifth place at yesterday’s championship, losing to several teams they had routinely beaten in 2004.

For the younger rowers, the regatta was a significant bump in the road for a lightweight crew that has improved each year. For the seniors, it was a disappointing finish to seven wildly successful careers in Ivy League rowing—careers that will be remembered, most of all, for capturing the 2003 national title.

For no one was it satisfying.

“It was a very tough day for us,” senior coxswain Dave Kang said.

The day’s omens haunted the Crimson bright and early. Harvard began the day in a morning heat against Georgetown—a team they had bested twice already in 2004. With headwinds blowing in from the northeast and affecting mostly lanes three and above, the Crimson finished a good second behind the Hoyas, who occupied lane one. That, according to Kang, would be a recurring theme on the day.

“The conditions were making it difficult for us to get by opponents we should’ve been able to get by,” Kang said. “I can’t say how much it hurt us, but it definitely didn’t help.”

That disappointment in the early program led to a difficult seeding in the Grand Final, which Harvard’s lights shared with Georgetown, Princeton, Yale, Cornell and No. 1 seed Navy. By that time, racing officials officially recognized the winds—which persisted at speeds of 10-12 miles per hour—as a hindrance and laid out the field accordingly, giving the higher seeds the advantage.

“It was just our bad luck,” Kang said.

At the start of the finals, Harvard took an unlikely early lead. Still, no one boat could edge its way more than two seats ahead of the rest.

By 1,000 meters, the crews were separating and Navy had pulled ahead. The Midshipmen wouldn’t fold, and by race’s end, Navy had taken a lead of more than a length ahead of second-place Georgetown, finishing three and a half seconds ahead of the Hoyas at 6:05:02.

Princeton, which had not beaten Harvard all year, finished third at 6:12:47. With Harvard and Yale battling it out for fourth, the Elis grabbed the lead late and finished a half-second ahead of the Crimson at 6:15:67. Harvard finished at 6:16:28, more than 11 seconds behind the leader.

“I have the utmost respect for the other teams,” Kang said. “They were faster than we were. The results show it.”

Still, many were left shaking their heads at what might have been without yesterday’s brutal, uneven elements. The senior coxswain from Sugarland, Texas, was one of them.

“Rowing is an outdoor sport,” Kang said. “In rowing, you’re subject to the variables.”

At that, the Crimson returned home from the IRAs empty-handed for the first time since 2002.

—Staff writer Alex McPhillips can be reached at rmcphill@fas.harvard.edu.