H-Y-P Victories Punctuate Perfect Seasons for Top Boats

Harvard-Yale-Princeton never needs an introduction, but the rivalry takes on special significance when the schools are ranked first, second, and fourth in the country.

In lightweight dual racing, it simply doesn’t get any bigger than this.

With the stakes the highest they’ve been all season, the Crimson lightweights delivered their best performance yet.

No. 2 Harvard’s first and second varsity eights both earned victories over the No. 1 Tigers and No. 4 Bulldogs in the team’s final dual race and the seniors’ last race ever on the Charles.

The victory in the first varsity eight gave the Crimson the Goldthwait Cup for the second straight year and will, in all likelihood, grant Harvard the top seed at EARC Sprints and the top spot in the national rankings.

The Crimson second varsity eight also likely earned itself the top seed at Sprints, and the top two eights led Harvard to a runaway victory in the Vogel Cup, which uses a points-based system to recognize the top team finish. The Crimson won with 36 points, while Princeton was second with 23 and Yale was third with 21.

FIRST AND SECOND VARSITY EIGHTS

They say that third 500 meters is where races are won and lost.

Indeed, the Harvard 1V’s dominant third 500 sent it straight to the top of the nation.

The Tigers took a slight lead in the race’s early stages, but all three crews were fairly even in the first half of the race.

“I think we were probably a seat or maybe two seats down in the first 750 meters,” seven seat Austin Meyer said.

“It was pretty much neck and neck across all three crews,” added captain and six seat Will Newell.

But all that changed when the Crimson crossed through the Mass. Ave Bridge.

“We made a really strong push in the third 500 that got us five or six seats,” Meyer said.

Harvard’s pace proved too much for the Bulldogs to handle.

While Princeton was able to maintain overlap with the Crimson, it was never able to retake the seats it lost, and Harvard was able to survive a late Tiger surge to win by a one-second margin.

“I think it’s one of the best pieces we’ve put together,” Meyer said. “It was really a focused and internal effort on everyone’s part.”

It was the second straight year in which the 1V has gone unbeaten in dual season.

This season, that spotlight was shared by the Crimson’s 2V, which has also won every race this season.

While it was Harvard’s second half that earned the boat the victory in the 1V race, the 2V made its biggest move in the middle 1000 meters of the race.

The Crimson reached the 500-meter mark around three seats behind Princeton, but managed to convert that into a three-seat lead on the Tigers by the 1000-meter mark. Harvard continued to move on the Tigers in the third 500, and by the time the boats reached the final push of the race, the Crimson’s lead was too much for Princeton to overcome, and Harvard earned a 1.9-second victory over the Tigers and a 9.8-second victory over Yale.

The Crimson 2V, which had been seeded fourth in the latest EARC polls despite having won all of its races, will likely earn the top seed in the final seeding poll.

It would have been hard to script a better ending for the seniors in Harvard’s top two boats—Newell, Andrew Trott, and Jared Dourdeville in the 1V, and coxswain Lizzy Maybank and rowers Tyler Caldwell, Sean Duncan, Billy Hennrikus, and Ben Bayley in the 2V.

“There’s nothing else you can ask for,” Newell said.

THIRD VARSITY EIGHT

While the Crimson 3V was unable to match the success of its 1V and 2V counterparts, its finish ahead of Princeton helped Harvard win the Vogel Trophy and the 3V better its own seeding for the Sprints.

The Bulldogs, clearly the fastest crew in the race, took an early and sizeable lead, leaving the Crimson and the Tigers to duke it out for second place.

Harvard had a slight lead over Princeton heading into the halfway mark and used a strong push in the third 500 to help it earn the second-place finish. Yale cruised to a 10-second victory and posted a time 3.4 seconds faster than its own 2V.

FRESHMAN EIGHTS

While the varsity rankings in the EARC polls are bound to change dramatically, the freshman seeding seems to be spot-on. In the 1F event, the crews finished in exactly the order they were seeded, with the top-seeded Bulldogs winning, the fourth-seeded Tigers in second, and the fifth-seeded Crimson in third.

“We didn’t get a very good start, and Princeton and Yale got a length lead pretty early,” said Harvard freshman coach Linda Muri. “Our guys ... pushed back. They had to spend a lot of energy to [get back into it]. That kind of gassed them for the rest of the race.”

Because the Tigers and the Bulldogs didn’t have 2Fs, the Crimson’s 2F raced against a Yale 4V/2F combination crew and the Princeton 4V. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the experienced rowers carried the day, with the Bulldogs winning, the Tigers in second, and Harvard in third.

“We knew it was going to be tough, and they were just going to do as well as they could do,” Muri said. “[Princeton and Yale] got a good jump off the start, which you expect from varsity oarsmen.”

—Staff writer Christina C. McClintock can be reached at ccmcclin@fas.harvard.edu.