Fine Tuning for Harvard in Opener

The Radcliffe women’s lightweight crew took to the water for the first time this spring, and after a mixed-bag performance on Saturday against Georgetown in the Class of 2004 Cup, the team regrouped and swept Holy Cross and Smith yesterday.

Consistently, the band of novice walk-ons shined, placing first on both days, smoking boats full of girls with greater experience.

“It took a lot of hard work this week over spring break and a lot of focus,” novice stroke Elyse Traverse said. “We’ve done a lot of team building lately and we have really come together.”

Interim head coach Will Stevens urged rowers to fine tune their approach and galvanized the team with lineup shuffles between the two days.

“The biggest difference was a sense of focus and of urgency that the teams, the boats, the rowers realized that they couldn’t take anything for granted and had to go after it every single stroke,” Stevens said.

SMITH/HOLY CROSS

On a clear and cold Sunday with a bit of a tailwind and a new-found sense of urgency, the Black and White swept the field, winning every race soundly. The first varsity scorched by Holy Cross with an impressive 10.4 second lead, second varsity with a punishing 12.4 second lead, and the scrappy novices with an 18 second advantage. Smith College also fielded three third-place boats.

“It was nice to know that we could make changes very quickly and that will be a good stepping stone for the rest of the season,” co-captain Amanda Kolb said. “We’re always working on getting boats to move the best together. The more practice that we get in lineups and on the water is just going to contribute to that speed.”

Harvard swept the races against rowers with a definite size advantage: Holy Cross sent Division I heavyweights to battle the Radcliffe lightweights.

“We set this up to be a challenge for them,” Stevens added. “I felt like going into this season that they would be a strong crew and to be stronger you have to race against tougher competition.”

CLASS OF 2004 CUP

Mirroring last year’s results, the Black and White surged to take the first three races of the day, as the third varsity four, the novice eight, and the second varsity eight rallied to make a claim to the cup with a 4.3 second margin.

“I think as a team we were, in both boats, disappointed with how we rowed,” co-captain Katherine Woodman-Maynard said.

Though the second varsity eight won its race, the close margin caused Stevens to take aggressive action in the boat.

“The performance of both the first and second varsity boats was pretty poor—the second boat was able to do enough that they squeaked out of it with a win, but there were some underlying major problems,” Stevens said.

On the other hand, the novice eight won the day with a 6.6 second margin over the Hoyas, stretching its lead to an entire boat length at times.

“Georgetown is a team that didn’t have a very strong program but now has gotten better each year,” Kolb said. “I think winning against the Georgetown novices wasn’t a small thing.”

“We had no idea what to expect,” Traverse said. “Our coxswain [freshman Ellen Lehman] had never competed in any sport, but she performed absolutely incredibly.”

—Staff writer Elizabeth a Joyce can be reached at eajoyce@fas.harvard.edu.