M. Crews: In Search of National Championships

So far, 1993-94 men's crew season has not exactly gone as planned.

But, its season not yet over, the Crimson can still make good on a year that has taken some very unexpected twists and turns in recent weeks.

At Eastern Sprints, the most important race to date, a bizzare mistake a quarter of the way through the race knocked out the front-running lightweights. Jeremy Barnum made a devastating faux pas at the 450-meter mark in the race. The senior "caught a crab," allowing his oar to bounce akwardly into the water. Harvard wound up finishing an absurd fifth.

At Sprints, the heavyweights, though close to eventual-winner Brown throughout the race, watched second place evaporate into third after Dartmouth blew past them in the final meters.

Brown, 1993 national champions, used a crushing start to blow Harvard quite simply out of the water while Dartmouth, the second-place finisher, only blipped onto Harvard's radar screen late in the race.

Brown had destroyed the previously-undefeated Crimson the week before at the Stein Cup in Providence, R.I. In a surprisingly lopsided race, the Bears established an incredible full-length lead in the first 20 strokes and never looked back. Brown finished seven seconds in front of Harvard, a veritable eternity in crew.

More demons haunted the lightweights in their turn-up two weeks before Sprints: the "double trouble" weekend of the Harvard-Yale-Princeton regatta and the dual race against Dartmouth.

At H-Y-Ps, the Crimson veered into Princeton's lane at the 800-meter mark and were disqualified. And with the very un-Harvard-esque miscue still in their minds, the lights disintegrated in the last 30 strokes of the Dartmouth race the next day.

Early season victories give some indication of what these crews can do. Both the heavyweights and lightweights swept the San Diego Crew Classic, destroying Washington and Fordham, respectively.

The heavyweights have also notched victories against Princeton, MIT, Navy and Northestern. The lightweights have vanquished MIT and Navy.

In a side note to the regular-season action, the heavyweights best Yale this past Saturday in the annual Harvard-Yale regatta in New London, CT.

They will next travel to Lake Harsha at Cincinnati, OH for the National Championships. Harvard will focus on still-unbeaten Brown.

Because of their poor finish at Sprints, the lightweights berth at National Championships was very much up in the air. But after some finagling, the Crimson have convinced the powers-that-be that they deserve to be there to, too.

"We expect to finally demonstrate that these other races have not seen our best," Roberts says.

MEN'S CREW

Record: H: 5-1;L:2-3

Ivy League:-

Key Players: John Roberts, Didzis Voldins

Key Seniors: John Roberts, Didzis Voldins