PERFORMANCE OF THE YEAR: Men's Lightweights vs. Navy

When the Harvard varsity lightweights reached the starting line for their showdown with No. 1 Navy, none of the Crimson oarsmen could feign indifference to the challenge that awaited them.

Lined up next to them sat nine yellow shirts—the very yellow shirts the varsity had been unable to win in three consecutive tries.

There they were, a Navy crew that had taken each dual race of the 2005 season and turned them into just one-sided time trials.

Navy had dominated Haines Cup competition for the last three seasons, had escaped with a one-plus second dual win over the Crimson the year before, and had trumped Harvard in a boat-length victory at the 2004 Eastern Sprints. The past few Midshipmen-Crimson showdowns had validated the No. 1-versus-No. 2 atmosphere that smothered an already tense starting line in the early morning on April 23.

But Harvard, which had yet to see Navy in 2005, knew at least one thing for sure: nothing about this race would be a time trial.

“We were confident we had speed,” said senior varsity seven-seat Michael Kummer, “but we were going in blind to how fast Navy was. There was a lot of nervous tension: ‘How fast are these guys? How are we going to step up?’”

Navy answered the first question immediately and Harvard answered the second almost as quickly. The Midshipmen had been burying its competition in the first 500 meters all season long, but the No. 2 Crimson fought back from an early four-seat deficit with a powerful base cadence and pulled even by the time both boats reached the halfway point.

“As soon as we stopped them from moving on us,” said senior varsity six-seat Dave Stephens, “we started rowing through them. By the time they got to the one thousand, they were done.”

The Crimson varsity, however, was just warming up. When Navy showed signs of fading just after the midway point, Harvard destroyed the stalemate with a dominant third 500 meters.

“Once we saw ourselves pull even at eleven hundred or twelve hundred down,”said senior varsity three-seat Griffin Schroeder, “we just took off.”

As the Harvard lightweights emerged from the Mass. Ave. Bridge at the halfway point, and as a crowd of Crimson-clad supporters shouted encouragement from atop the bridge, Harvard took out all of that initial nervous tension on the Midshipmen.

“We relied on our bread and butter, our base cadence,” Kummer said. “With our base cadence, things will happen down the course for us.”

By the time the two boats passed the MIT boathouse at 1,500 meters down, the No. 2 Crimson was almost a boat length ahead of Navy—the Harvard crew had jumped seven seats in just over 300 meters. All it had taken was 25 strokes and Navy’s No. 1 ranking and 14-race win streak could do nothing more than fade amidst the path already laid by the streaking Harvard boat.

“We went in very nervous, geared up, [and] on edge,” Kummer said. “We treated it like a championship race. Still, with all that pressure, we managed to stay within our boat. The stakes were so high and we still remained calm.”

A poised Harvard varsity that had waited four years for the view it enjoyed headed into the last 500—eight bright yellow shirts and eight blue and yellow Navy oars doing everything they could to inch closer to the Crimson—punished the Midshipmen with a furious sprint in the last strokes to the finish line. Navy’s desperate attempt to bring up the rating in the final 500 and shrink the open-water gap between the two boats did nothing to lessen the impact of those 2,000 meters.

“Winning that race was the big confidence booster for us,” Stephens said. “After beating them and beating them by that much, we started to realize that we were fast.”

Harvard scorched the Midshipmen by 4.7 seconds and crossed the line in 5:49.3. Navy would finish in 5:54.0, with half a boat of open water separating victorious No. 2 from the country’s once-undefeated No. 1 crew.

“We came out of that race ready to take on the league,” Kummer said. “That was a benchmark week, and everyone realized it.”

Despite the early finish—the varsity race ended just after 8 a.m.—a raucous group of Harvard supporters greeted the victorious lightweights as they powered through the line. It was a crowd that had been silent for three years of frustrating Haines Cup races, of close calls and second-place finishes. It was about time.

And for the Harvard varsity boat, it was time to add both a No. 1 to its name and a set of long-anticipated bright yellow shirts to its collection.

—Staff writer Aidan E. Tait can be reached at atait@fas.harvard.edu.