Crew Hopes Peak To Come at Sprints

With the entire East Coast racing faster and faster regattas, the Black and White’s boat is struggling to catch up.

On Saturday in New Haven, this reality did not change.

The Harvard women’s heavyweight crew lost at Yale this weekend, extending its three-race losing streak into the heart of the season.

In the first varsity eight, the Black and White fell behind the Bulldogs from the beginning, losing by ten seconds with a time of 6:50.1.

“We definitely thought we were pretty well matched up against Yale, given the margins from last week,” captain Nicole Gavel said. “We would have hoped for it to be a close race but it didn’t happen.”

The second varsity eight, in contrast, fared much better, posting the top time for the team at 6:42.2. As the squad was the fastest during the day, losing to Yale by only two seconds, questions remained for the Black and White on how to improve next week and, ultimately, at the Eastern Sprints and NCAA Nationals.

“We’re a crew that wants to peak at Sprints and NCAAs,” Gavel said. “We can’t stand losing, but each time we race is an opportunity to figure out our best team and figure out strategies of how to race our best at Sprints.”

Besides figuring out its best combination for the first varsity eight, the team will also hope to avoid being over-stroked. On Saturday, the varsity squad could only stroke at a rate of 33 while Yale attained a rate of 35.

“We executed our race but we were over-stroked,” senior Laura Martin said. “We need to race a 35 and we’re going to work on that because we’re a really fast team, but our goal is to get up our strokes.”

One positive for the team was that it seemed to solve its problem of losing momentum over the last 500 meters of the race—certainly the case in last week’s lost to Dartmouth. Despite its ability to keep up, Radcliffe’s new stroke-rate problem plagued its ultimate effort on Saturday.

“We raced the last 500 well this week,” Gavel said. “Technically, we did what we had to do, it looked good and seemed like a solid race, but we had to be at a higher stroke rating.”

Members of the Black and White maintained that the crew was not satisfied with its recent efforts despite overcoming certain problems. Radcliffe will hope to elevate its efforts to the level of No. 4 Yale, especially as the biggest race of the season, the Eastern Sprints, is on the horizon.

“When you get up to this level of racing, “ Gavel said, “We want to become a powerful boat together, [and] power through the entire 2000 meters right from the start.”

The Black and White still has much work to do, especially with the rest of the East Coast getting faster and faster as it lags behind.

“The East Coast is fast right now, “ Bates said. “But we can be up to where they’re at.”

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