Men's Lightweight Crew Competes at Princeton Chase

What is one to do when one misses Halloween at school? Bring Halloween to the regatta, of course. The Harvard men’s lightweight team brought the holiday spirit to Lake Carnegie, where it looked to improve on its strong performance in the Head of the Charles. The team traveled to Princeton, N.J., to avenge its loss to Princeton in the Princeton 3-Mile Chase.

With little wind and partially sunny skies, racing conditions were perfect on Lake Carnegie. In dealing with any pressure to avenge its loss against Princeton two weeks ago, the team decided to simply look at this regatta as simply a step on the way towards developing as a team.

“For us the fall is just about taking the race for granted and just providing check marks along the way for our training” co-captain Sam Frum said. “So right now we’re just really focused on what we’re doing over here in Cambridge.”

The team’s day started off with the Varsity Lightweight Eight final, in which Harvard had three boats. The A boat, coxed by junior Charlie Zhang, and with Frum, juniors Jack Kelly and Christopher Wales, sophomores Andre Dempsey, Daniel Bridgwater, Niels Laurberg, Andre Dupuis, and senior Ian Klein, completed the 2.75 mile course in 13:57.47, earning seventh place out of 32 boats. At the Chase split, the boat was just four seconds behind Navy’s A boat, which was in fourth place behind the A boats of Cornell, Princeton, and Yale. It was three seconds off Princeton’s B boat, and 20 seconds behind the first place boat, Cornell’s A boat, which finished with a time of 13:37.97.

The V8 B boat finished 21st with a time of 14:48.98, and the C boat crossed the finish line at 15:43.21, placing 31st.

“The varsity squad, I would say, had a mixed bag of results at the end of the day,” Frum said. “We had positive results with the smaller boats, like the coxed fours, but a bit of a tough go with the eight piece.”

In their first time at the competition, the freshmen earned sixth place. They took their Halloween spirit to a new level, and did so in style--literally, as both competing boats rowed dressed up as dots, giving spectators a treat.

“I think the frosh were definitely the highlight,” Klein said. “They had a really good go out there, they had a lot of fun with it. It was the first race that they actually got to race against some of the guys at their level that they’re going to be racing next year, so it was cool for them to see how that stacked up.”

The A boat, which featured a new lineup, with Andrew Wilkins, Andrew Sterne, Josh Kuppersmith, David Wexner, Nick Kochanek, Spencer Kaplan, Eryk Dobrushkin, and James Jacoby, finished in 14:16.55, outpaced by first-place finisher California by almost a minute, and besting the Tigers by half a second. The B boat finished a little over a minute later, with a time of 15:20.24.

Four boats competed in the Lightweight 4 final Sunday afternoon. The A boat, with Zhang, Kelly, Dempsey, and Bridgwater, had the best and closest finish of the day, coming in third place of 31 boats, at 15:26.56, less than a second behind Cornell’s A boat. The team was 12 seconds behind the winner, Yale A. The B boat came in seventh place, with a time of 15:35.57. The next two Harvard boats finished in 26th and 27th place.

“For us, this is really just a ‘we’re going to put our hard hats on and get ready for the winter to go to work,” Frum said. “We’re going to hit the rowing machines, and the Charles until it freezes over, and really try to get better out there.”