United States Quad Back in Crimson

As athletes ready themselves to compete at this weekend’s Head of the Charles regatta—an event that drew the attention of more than 300,000 spectators last year—the river has been buzzing with activity.

But for Harvard lightweight rowers junior Matt O’Leary, classmate Erich Schultze, sophomore Michael Wales, and junior Alex Newell, who competed as a quad at the 2011 World Rowing Under-23 Championships this summer, preparation for the upcoming season began many months ago.

“[The international rowing scene] is a completely different world from the world of college athletics,” Schultze said. “It’s a very high level … when you go over there and see the level that the world is at, it becomes really fun to come back to college and have that depth and experience.”

Last spring, O’Leary and Schultze rowed together on the Crimson varsity lightweight boat that finished the dual season undefeated, won Eastern Sprints, and finished .02 seconds shy of a National Championships. Newell raced in the 2V that mirrored the 1V’s dual season Sprints success and competed in the four that won the IRA National Championships. Wales stroked a freshman eight that improved consistently over the course of the season. Soon after Sprints, the quartet made the decision to compete together for a shot at an international regatta.

“We had a bunch of good scullers [looking to compete], and we thought we had a lot of good potential, good athletes, and strong work ethic,” Schultze said. “[Harvard coach Linda Muri] agreed to coach us and it just came about and went from there.”

After earning a victory at the World Championship Trials on New Jersey’s Mercer Lake, O’Leary, Schultze, Wales, and Newell journeyed across the Atlantic to compete at the U-23 World Championships, as Amsterdam played host to a total of 314 crews from 63 nations. Included among this group were 12 former and current Harvard rowers.

“It was a blast to roll over there with all my bros from my team,” Wales said. “We trained with [Muri] right out of the Harvard boathouse ... It was great, because we all know each other on a deeper level now.”

“It was my first time racing internationally,” Newell continued. “Although we didn’t get the results we were hoping for, that experience of racing on the national team was unbelievable.”

Despite barely missing qualification for the semifinal round of the international regatta with a fourth-place finish in its first race, the Harvard lightweight quadruple sculls won the C finals to place 13th overall.

“We didn’t know what to expect or how fast we were in the national scene,” O’Leary said. “That really had an effect in our first race; we didn’t finish in the top three which was necessary to qualify for semifinal ... But it was really good for us to be exposed to those teams.”

The four Harvard rowers—of whom only Schultze had previously raced at U-23 Worlds—gained valuable experience at the championships and bring unprecedented depth to this year’s Harvard lineup.

“Not performing as well as we hoped [we would at Worlds] gives us a lot of motivation to improve this fall and spring and go back and perform better,” Newell said. “The racing experience puts us in a great spot both in terms of fitness and the racing mindset.”

In addition to the depth expected this season, a summer spent rowing together will also likely have a positive impact for the Crimson lightweight squad.

“The biggest way [our experience this summer] helps is with training more than the racing,” O’Leary said. “We all sort of realized that there’s another level of hard work that goes into competing at an international level ... and that has translated into our training this fall.”

“We have each others backs and mesh well together,” Wales continued. “We all had this great experience, so we’re on a similar page about how aggressively we want to come out this season.”

Summer training also evidently played a role in the Crimson’s international success, helping the four rowers adjust to sculling together.

“I had sculled before but never really in a race,” O’Leary said. “But we put in so many hours that I figured it out pretty easily ... [Muri] more than anything else was the reason it wasn’t a disaster, but overall it wasn’t that tough of a transition.”

The transition back to camps hasn’t been too tough either.

“The momentum that you carry from a summer like that is huge,” Schultze said. “It’s rare to have four of us racing internationally. [That kind of] experience brings an atmosphere and level to the fall that some other programs don’t have the benefit of. Our captain Tom [Nesel] and the other guys have done a great job harnessing that energy and making it into a good, fast environment.”

—Staff writer Catherine E. Coppinger can be reached at ccoppinger@college.harvard.edu.