Head coach Billy Boyce’s lightweight rowing program has shown once again that there is no comparable team in the country, as the Crimson completed its three-peat on Sunday with another gold medal at the IRA National Championships.
Harvard won the team trophy and both the 1V and 2V races, while its 4v+ placed second.
“Pressure is a privilege,” said junior Preston Darling about entering the tournament as two-time reigning champions. “Doubt is one of the most crippling emotions in sport, and what our team does the best is to embrace the pressure and use it to fuel us.”
Harvard began its IRA title defense on Friday with heats for both the 1V and 2V boats.
The racing on Lake Natoma in California began with heats for the 2V, coxed by freshman Haley Hicks, where the Crimson faced off against its Ancient Eight rivals Princeton, Dartmouth, and Columbia. The 2V stayed close to the Tigers all race, but fell just short, ultimately losing its heat to Princeton by half a second.
At the early stage, who wins the heats is not as important, so the Crimson was happy with its strong performance despite not winning the heat outright.
This race was an attempt for the 2V to recover from a disappointing result last week, where it finished in third place at the Eastern Sprints by just half a second. That loss at the Eastern Sprints ended a multi-year winning streak for the 2V, but the boat rebounded with a national championship title this weekend.
Meanwhile, the varsity boat, coxed by freshman Nathalie Gregg, continued the action, taking on crews from Penn, Columbia, Georgetown, and Cornell. The Crimson’s top boat looked very strong in its heat, cruising to a nearly six-second win. Harvard’s 1V did not lose the entire season, completing its second consecutive undefeated campaign and earning back-to-back IRA national titles.
The boat returned six of its oarsmen from last year’s crew. Captain Ben Lundie, who rows stroke for the 1v, has led the team all season to its successful defense of the national title.
The Crimson also fielded a boat of four at the IRAs. The 4v+ raced in a timed trial, clocking 6:27.978, before racing again in a semifinal early on Friday evening. It placed second in the semifinal behind Penn, but still qualified for the final.
On Saturday, the 4v+ placed second in the championship, falling to the Quakers by just over a second and a half. Regardless, the Crimson crew claimed the first of the team’s three medals.
On Sunday — the most anticipated day of the regatta — the Crimson’s 2V, stroked by junior Nikhil Ramaraju, took on a tough field composed of boats from Penn, Princeton, Georgetown, Navy, and Dartmouth.
In the fourth lane, Harvard remained neck and neck with its adversaries at the start of the race. However, the Crimson steadily built a lead in the second half and finished just under 1.50 seconds in front of second-place Penn to claim the team’s first gold medal of the weekend. The victory also served as revenge for the boat after its loss to the Quakers at the Eastern Sprints.
Merely an hour after the 2V’s victory, the Crimson’s varsity boat took on familiar foes: Princeton, Dartmouth, Cornell, Penn, and MIT.
Getting out to a quick start was one of the team’s goals, according to Darling.
“We know that being the reigning champions, if we get out in front, people are immediately going to doubt their own ability to catch up to us,” the Fenwick, Ontario native explained.
The race began tight, with all boats very close together at the start. Harvard managed to creep ahead to a ¾-length lead, which it extended throughout the remainder of the race. Ultimately, the Crimson kept its multi-year winning streak alive, crossing the line in dominant fashion — ahead by nearly two full seconds — to don the national championship crown.
“My first reaction is just immense pride and satisfaction,” Boyce said after the win. “This was a very specific and very ambitious goal that this team set at the very beginning of the year, and to achieve that is just remarkable. It’s a testament to how hard these guys have worked, the sacrifices they’ve made, their commitment, their passion, and just how talented they are. These are really good athletes, and these are really good guys.”
Boyce’s satisfaction with his team is well-deserved. Harvard’s top boat has not lost in multiple years, and the team now has several classes of rowers who have never felt the sting of a loss while wearing a Crimson uniform. The culture of winning that Boyce and his fellow coaches have constructed is truly remarkable.
“These guys are veterans at this point,” Boyce said, praising his seniors. “They were very, very accomplished and very driven.”
“More than anything, these guys know how to win, and that’s one of those attitudes that’s thrown around, but we specifically defined in our program what that takes. These guys believe that they do what’s necessary to achieve that, and they have been joined each year by younger guys who come in with no sense of entitlement,” the coach added.
The team has a winning culture built on leadership, where its younger rowers and coxswains look up to the older athletes and to the renowned alumni, who are often spotted at the team’s home races.
The lightweight rowing team’s season is not entirely over. Some of the younger members of the team will travel to the United Kingdom this summer to compete in the Henley Royal Regatta (HRR). Last season, Harvard won the Temple Challenge Cup, becoming the first crew in program history to earn the title at the prestigious competition.
This summer, only a few of the rowers will compete in the HRR, as once you have won a student event, you are no longer eligible to race. Therefore, the Crimson is sending a group of four younger rowers to vie for the Prince Albert Challenge Cup.
Regardless of the results abroad this summer, the team’s mission for next season is clear. The Crimson crew is already hungry for its fourth consecutive championship and the chance to make history.
“Only Cornell has ever won three national titles in a row,” Darling explained. “The opportunity to really attack it and make history with four in a row is really special, and that’ll be at the forefront of our vision and training next year.”
—Staff writer Asher M. Meron can be reached at [email protected].