Cups Up: Second Varsity Powers Heavies at Sprints

WORCESTER—For the first time in a long time, the winner’s dock belonged to somebody else.

After three years and three consecutive Eastern Sprints titles, the Harvard varsity heavyweights relinquished their EARC dominance to No. 1 Princeton on a turbulent day at Lake Quinsigamond. A dramatic come-from-behind win for Harvard’s No. 1 second varsity, coupled with a third-place finish for the Crimson freshman eight, helped seal Harvard’s 27th Rowe Cup.

Thunderstorms and rainfall suspended the lightweight and heavyweight varsity races for over an hour, and fans took cover in the course boathouse as violent storms rolled in during the early afternoon.

“We were just getting ready to start and a huge storm began, so the raced got delayed and we had to hide in this little hut for an hour,” sophomore varsity stroke George Kitovitz said. “All the crews had to take their boats out and run for the nearest shelter.”

But when the time came, when the wind had died down and the referees resumed their positions, neither rain nor lightning could keep the Tigers from fulfilling a season of prophetic EARC success, which began with the team’s first dual victory over the Crimson since 2001.

“This is something they’ve been going after for past three years,” varsity three-seat Andrew Boston said. “And they put it together really well this season.”

Princeton’s varsity eight—composed almost entirely of a 2003 freshman boat that annihilated EARC competition, won a national title, and dominated at Henley—turned its experience and years of frustration toward Harvard into an emphatic row Sunday evening in Worcester.

“I’ve got to hand it to them for being very good athletes and continuing to work hard for the last three years,” Boston said. “They’ve had really high expectations put on them since they were sophomores, and they’ve found a lot of speed this year.”

The No. 1 Princeton crew asserted itself immediately, snatching four seats off of the high 20 to claim a half-length lead over the field in the first 500 meters. Harvard’s own start was shaky at best and landed the Crimson in an early sixth-place hole.

“We just got dropped off the start,” Kitovitz said. But we kept our composure well and rowed back through everybody except Princeton.”

The Crimson used a strong first 500 to break an early stalemate with Yale, Brown, and Northeastern. Harvard sat in third after 300 meters down, with Princeton holding a solid six-seat lead and Wisconsin in second with a seat advantage over the Crimson.

Harvard pushed through Wisconsin with a move at the 400-meter mark, claiming second place by the end of the first 500 meters. The Crimson secured a two-seat lead over the Badgers and set its sights on streaking Princeton, which opened up open water on Harvard by the 1200-meter mark.

The advantage didn’t last, however, as Harvard’s strong push through the third 500 helped the Crimson regain contact with the Tigers. It became a two-boat race between Harvard and Princeton—so often the case in the past four seasons—as the boats became clear to a crowd of screaming spectators in the final 500.

“As much as perhaps they did get a whole length up on us,” Kitovitz said, “we never let them out of our sights and we kept pushing. We never thought, ‘Oh, we’re up on Brown, that’s good for second place.’ We kept thinking about how to gain on Princeton, how to crawl back on them.”

In the end, the Crimson’s fight for second was all it could muster. The Tigers, who had not won by less than open water all season, quelled Harvard’s surge in the final 500 to take home the Sprints title that had eluded them for three years.

There was a pair of second-place finishes in 2003 and 2004 to accompany mounting expectations that this Princeton class might be one of the best ever.

On Sunday, it was: the Tigers erased two years of frustration with a triumphant 2.5 second win over the Crimson, crossing in 5:44.03 to Harvard’s second-place time of 5:46.2.

“It felt really good and it felt smooth,” Boston said. “But it was definitely missing something. We can’t say we ran out of water. We had all the water that was necessary, we just couldn’t pull it through.”

The second varsity, however, took advantage of every meter of water available to eek out a gold medal win—the boat’s fourth in five seasons.

No. 1 Harvard, undefeated and untested in the dual season, fell back by as much as a length to Yale in the opening 1000 meters in Sunday’s final.

A strong first 500 from Wisconsin put the Crimson second varsity in third place—uncharted territory for a crew that hadn’t seen a deficit after the 750-meter mark all year.

“All I know is that at 1000 meters, we were clearly walking through [Wisconsin] but not Yale,” said second varsity coxswain Amanda Caplan. “I made it very clear that Yale was moving on us.”

The Crimson’s third 500, however, changed the game as Harvard made a move to gain ground on Yale with under 700 meters remaining.

“I wasn’t sure how much we could pull off,” Caplan said. “But when I realized we had closed the gap with them somewhat, I told them to bring it up and made it clear that they were taking ground. The guys literally flew when they realized that the speed we had was enough to take them past Yale.”

Harvard, so untested in the final 1000 meters all season long, put together its finest last half when it mattered most. The Crimson showed itself all too prepared for a late deficit, plowing through Yale in less than 200 meters to claim the Bulldogs’ bow-ball in the last 500. The Crimson crossed the line in 6:23.08, and Yale followed in 6:26.67. Harvard made up more than six seconds in the final 60 strokes of the race to nab gold, and Wisconsin rounded out the medal winners with a time of 6:31.05.

“It was really nerve-racking, since we’ve never rowed from behind before,” said captain six-seat Morgan Henderson. “I think it’s a huge credit to our guys, and they just came through with it in the end.”

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