Radcliffe Competes With Nation’s Best

This weekend marked more races against the best crews in the nation, but only the lightweight women’s crew team proved up to the task. While No. 2 Yale got the better of the Black and White heavyweight women’s crew team on Saturday morning in the Charles River Challenge, the lightweights knocked off No. 2 Princeton to win the Class of 2009 Cup.

The No. 4 Black and White have done what only one other crew in the country has managed to do—beat Princeton in dual competition.

With all the hard work and training, Radcliffe is starting to find its strongest rhythm yet.

“I think we had a really solid piece,” junior Grace Hollowell said. “It was our best race to date.”

In a race which the Black and White had not won in the last four years, nothing could thwart the lightweights.

“We had a really solid week in practice coming off the Stanford race. It’s always fun racing Princeton, because there’s a big rivalry there,” Hollowell said. “We worked our butts off and it showed.”

Winning the race four seconds ahead of the Tigers with a finishing time of 7:25.1, the Varsity Eight inched ahead after the first 10 strokes and had built a six seat lead after the first 500 meters. By the final 400 meters, the race was all but over, as Radcliffe was able to accelerate after the midway point to an open-water lead that the varsity eight would not relinquish.

“We got off to a good start,” Hollowell said. “By somewhere around 750, we were up by a couple of feet, but we were pretty even off the start. We really just moved in the second 500, and our middle 1000 was probably the best part of our piece.”

The Tigers Varsity Four managed to thwart both the Black and White’s A and B boats with little difficulty. Princeton finished 10 seconds ahead of the Radcliffe A, which came from behind after the B boat jumped out to second place at the start.

After a rocky first day that saw the No. 16 Black and White drop races to Yale, Virginia, and USC, the varsity squads responded with a clean sweep in yesterday’s concluding races of the Charles River Challenge against Gonzaga and Tennessee.

The weekend opened with a tough loss to Yale in the Case Cup, a race marked by strong headwinds throughout the course.

The Varsity Eight never managed to recover from Yale’s fast start that allowed the Bulldogs to open-up a boat-length lead halfway through the race. Yale finished in 6:56 with a 5.9-second margin of victory.

“Our rhythm just didn’t really feel as long and strong as the rhythm we were finding in practice,” senior Sarah Moore said.

“I think we gave up a little too much in the second 500 and against a crew that strong, you can’t really give them anything.”

In the evening races, the Black and White adopted a different race plan, but still could not manage to get back on the right track, as Virginia and Southern California bested both the varsity and second varsity eight boats.

“We felt like we had given up a little too much against Yale in the first 1000 meters in morning. Our plan in the afternoon was to go out and establish control of the race and keep moving from there,” Moore said.

Even with Radcliffe in third place and finishing 4.5 seconds behind first-place Virginia, the Varsity Eight race made for an exciting finish nonetheless, as the Cavaliers crossed the finish line a slim 0.8 seconds ahead of Southern California.

“It was a combination of having trouble internally with the middle 1000 and Virginia putting together a good second 500,” Moore said.

Sunday provided the Black and White with a chance to rebound against Gonzaga and Tennessee and both of Radcliffe’s boats seized the opportunity.

The Varsity Eight crushed the competition, finishing 16.1 seconds ahead of Tennessee and 22.4 seconds ahead of Gonzaga.

The Second Varsity Eight won a tough race by three seconds against runner-up Tennessee. In addition, the Varsity Four A and B boats finished first and second, respectively, in their race.

Races against opponents this weekend can affect bids for the NCAA tournament. The selection committee uses these outcomes to compare the quality of the crews from different regions of the country.

—Staff writer Robert T. Hamlin can be reached at rhamlin@fas.harvard.edu.