SEASON RECAP: Radcliffe Returns to Championship Form

The Radcliffe heavyweights’ season of a year ago left the program stunned.

For the first time in 10 years, the squad failed to reach the NCAA championships.

As the result, this season, the crew needed to succeed, not just for itself, but because history demanded it.

And the entire team rose to the challenge.

The Black and White gained three first-place finishes during the spring season to go with two second-place nods. In addition, Radcliffe came in fourth at Eastern Sprints and notched an 11th-place finish overall at the NCAA Championships.

For the team, this is a definite step in the right direction. Now, with more experience and more confidence, the program is back on its feet to push for even more success in the near future.

“We’ve come a long way from where we were,” captain Carrie Williams said. “It’s a continual upward trend.”

“We’re very excited for where our program is going,” junior Esther Lofgren added.

The crew’s biggest accomplishment of the year came with its return to the NCAAs.

At the championships, however, the teams raced well but finished near the bottom of the pack, with no squad reaching a Grand Final.

Each crew, from the varsity four to the varsity eight, just missed qualifying for the final with fourth-place performances.

“If you look at it there’s 12 teams invited, it’s not where we wanted to finish,” Lofgren said. “But this was the first NCAA competition for many of us, and we raced our hardest.”

None more so than the varsity eight, as the squad posted a staggering time of 6:27.62, one of its best times on the year. In doing so, the crew finished just 0.37 seconds behind third-place Princeton, and, therefore, 0.37 seconds out of the Grand Final.

And in its semifinal heat, Radcliffe was gaining on the Tigers. With 25 more feet, an entrance into the Grand Final would have been there for the taking.

Another point of discontent rested in the placement of four of the top six seeds in the Black and White’s first heat.

If the squad had been entered in the second semifinal, the crew would have finished second, just 0.33 seconds behind top-seeded Southern California.

“It was rematch of Sprints, so it was very suspicious that they would have those lineups,” Williams said. “But as for our time, it was one of the best races we’ve ever run, to race that hard.”

But nothing can be done of that now. What can be gained from the weekend is experience for a young squad on the rise.

The more races the team gets against the best, the better it will become.

“I definitely think as a racer, the more time you go up against the top, the better you’ll be,” Lofgren said. “But you’re never content with just racing—you want to do well.”

Lofgren will lead the returning crew, and Radcliffe will look for even better results in the year to come.

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