HEAD OF THE CHARLES '07: Righting Its Ship

Just two years ago, the Radcliffe heavyweights hit a new low.

For the first time in nine years—a run that included a national title in 2003—the Radcliffe varsity heavyweights found themselves on the outside looking in, missing the cut for the all-important NCAA Championships.

For any other crew, these ups and downs are understood and even expected. But Radcliffe is not your normal program—it is one of the most storied in the history of women’s crew.

As a consequence, failing to make the 16-team NCAA Championships field in 2006 was a shock.

The crew was forced to respond, and with a stronger heavyweight field breathing down its collective neck—not to mention the forces of history pressuring the squad all the more—this was a tall task.

But respond it did. Bouncing back from 2006’s difficult dual season, the Black and White came out strong last spring, capturing early victories over then-No. 6 Princeton and Columbia and falling short against eventual national champion Brown by less than four seconds.

After a successful 8-4 dual season, Radcliffe landed back where it belonged—on the river in June, back in the NCAA Championships.

And this year, the team expects even more.

“Last year, we were in the Petite [Final], so now, we want to put ourselves in a position to win a medal,” junior co-captain Liz Demers says, referring to the Black and White’s 11th-place effort at the NCAAs. “The next step is to get ourselves to the Grand Finals.”

The crew is poised, but it is also young. Two of the leaders of the team, one commodore and one captain, are juniors. Radcliffe graduated four seniors from the top two eights last year. As a result, the Black and White will be asking much from its younger classes, its sophomores and juniors in particular.

“We graduated a handful of seniors last year,” senior co-captain Laura Larsen-Strecker says. “So we are definitely a young team.”

But this is not a setback. On the contrary, it is an exciting transformation for the crew. Everyone has a chance to race at the top. And as a result, the speed of the Black and White heavyweights is climbing to unprecedented levels.

“I think we have a really strong training program,” Demers says. “We’re doing more mileage, and it’s really paying off. We recently did some [ergometer] testing, and people now are already faster then they were last year in December. And it’s [even more] exciting because we’re a really young team.”

What would have been a fantastic four leading the young crew this year is now a triple threat: junior commodore Sarah Moore and captains Larsen-Strecker and Demers. The missing piece to the puzzle is Esther Lofgren, who is taking the year off to train with the U.S. National Team in pursuit of a spot on the 2008 Beijing Olympic squad.

Losing Lofgren provides another challenge for the Black and White, but the triumvirate at the head of the crew remains focused on the goal: returning to the medal stand at the end of the year.

Bolstering the Black and White’s effort this season are Demers and Larsen-Strecker, two captains who have taken two very different roads to get there.

Demers, in only her fourth year of competitive rowing, has progressed up the ranks rapidly. A former swimmer, Demers suffered an injury before her senior year of high school. Motivated by her uncle and parents, all former rowers, Demers left the pool and jumped into the river to row her senior year at Andover. That summer she competed for the junior national team.

To say she is a natural is an understatement.

“[My uncle] had me get on a ergometer, and it turned out it was in my genes,” Demers says. “I very quickly realized I was a better rower than I was a swimmer.”

Larsen-Strecker, on the other hand, has been rowing on the Charles for seven years, giving a young team an experienced veteran who knows the ins and outs of varsity racing.

Even with these different paths to the Weld Boathouse, Demers and Larsen-Strecker share a common leadership philosophy.

“I don’t think we’re that different in our leadership skills,” Demers says. “We both lead by example—we’re both not that vocal.”

And Moore completes the threesome, serving as commodore this year.

“She was voted commodore by the team, but there were a ton of people who could have been voted,” Demers says. “But she has a lot of ways to bring the team together outside of the boathouse. It’s so important that she brings people together in a realm outside the world of rowing.”

So the crew is back, with a strong, young team ready to pick up where Radcliffe left off last year.

And everyone, from the coaches to the captains to the walk-ons, has one goal in mind, the same goal as always—a return to glory.

—Staff writer Walter E. Howell can be reached at wehowell@fas.harvard.edu.