‘It’s Like the Super Bowl for Us’: Harvard’s Alumni Make Their Head of the Charles Return

With thousands of onlookers in tow on a gleaming fall day, some of Harvard’s most decorated rowers returned to Cambridge this morning to compete once again at the Head of the Charles. From a strong showing in the women’s alumni eights to a runner-up finish in the men’s senior master eights, the Crimson’s alumni showed that their thirst for victory never fades.

“It was so special,” said Calliste Skouras ’24, a two-time HOCR champion who was part of the women’s alumni eights crew. Coxswain Kayton E. Rotenberg ’23 steered the boat through the tricky twists and turns of the Charles to a seventh place finish earlier this morning.

Skouras teamed up with former teammates Ava Sack ’24 and Elsa Andrews ’24 to reprise the trio that brought a medal home to Cambridge in 2023 and 2022, along with six other rowers ranging from the class of 2024 back to the class of 2021.

The women narrowly missed making the podium — medals are given to the top five teams in the women’s alumni eight category — but still exceeded expectations, given that alumni races do not distinguish between weight classes.

“We were competing against some of the alumni boats of the best rowing programs in the country,” Skouras said. The 2024 graduate said that she felt out of practice with her first few strokes, but the technique she perfected over years of practice soon came back to her.

On the men’s side, the Crimson’s former competitors also found success.

In the men’s alumni eights, a boat led by recent Olympian and gold-medal winner Liam Corrigan ’19 finished fifth in a 45-boat field, falling short of last year’s first-place finish but not by much.

Meanwhile, the men’s senior master eights boat, which featured rowers aged 50 and up, finished second out of 33 boats. The boat representing the Marin Rowing Association, a California boat club which has the most points in the race for the coveted MacMahon Cup as of Saturday afternoon, bested the Crimson by seven seconds in a closely-contested heat.

The other races where Crimson boats took to the water on the second day of regatta competition included the women’s alumni fours, the men’s master fours (aged 30 and up), the men’s senior master fours (50+), and the women’s senior master eights (50+).

While most of the current Harvard rowers won’t compete in the regatta until tomorrow afternoon, some of the undergraduate talent did compete this afternoon, a couple hours after their Crimson predecessors finished racing. In the women’s club eights, Harvard’s boat finished as the runners-up to champions Yale, a race to the finish that saw the Bulldogs come out on top.

Tomorrow, the Crimson alumni will have the chance to cheer on their successors, with the satisfaction that comes with practicing having raced and practiced their craft again the day before. For the most recent Harvard graduates who returned, their first alumni race could be the first of many.

“It was so nostalgic, very bittersweet, because I do miss it so much,” Skouras said, reflecting on the experience of racing for Harvard once again. “But I’m so grateful to have the opportunity to do this now every year.”

Her boatmate Sack echoed that sentiment, saying that rowing with Skouras and Andrews felt “just like the good old days.”

“Head of the Charles is like a national holiday for us,” Sack said. “It’s like the big reunion Super Bowl.”

—Staff writer Jack Silvers can be reached at jack.silvers@thecrimson.com.