Women's Crew Season Recap

It’s been a successful season so far at Weld Boathouse, as both the women’s heavyweight and lightweight crews head into their respective national championship regattas ranked in the top 20 nationally.

After a difficult start to the season, the Radcliffe heavyweights rallied in the third annual Ivy League Championship to overcome their sixth-place seeding, finishing in third. The result was good enough to earn the 11th-ranked Black and White an at-large bid to the NCAA Championships.

Meanwhile, the departure of coach Michiel Bartman to the lightweight men’s team could not slow down the Radcliffe lightweight women. After an undefeated dual race season, the varsity eight will head into the IRA National Championship as the heavy favorite to win a national title.

HEAVYWEIGHTS

After finishing seventh against the best competition in the country at the Head of the Charles Regatta in the fall, the Black and White stumbled to open up the spring season. The first varsity boat lost three straight races against Ancient Eight competition, as the crew followed a loss to No. 3 Brown in Providence with defeats at the hands of Princeton and Cornell on the Charles a week later.

The team bounced back with wins over local competition, taking the Beanpot over BU and Northeastern,  but once again faltered against an Ivy League opponent in its final race of the dual season. Yale’s top boat bested Radcliffe by five seconds on the Housatonic to win its third straight Case Cup.

After the disappointing effort against Yale, the team chose to focus all their energy on the upcoming Ivy League Championships. Between the two races, the team had almost three weeks of uninterrupted training to regroup.

Coming into the weekend seeded sixth out of eight teams, Radcliffe outpaced its seed and finished third, ahead of both Cornell and Yale. The late-season performances were good enough to earn the No. 12 Black and White the last Ivy League at-large spot in the NCAA Championships in Indianapolis.

“The afternoon was one of those races that as a rower you only get to experience very rarely,” senior Jenna Gregoire said. “Everything seemed to come together and we were just so excited to be competitive with Princeton and Brown, who we consider to be national title contenders.”

LIGHTWEIGHTS

The Radcliffe lightweights faced a problem at the start of the 2013-2014 season: they didn’t have a coach. After Bartman improved the Black and White’s performance in each of the last two seasons—turning the crew into a national title contender—his sudden departure for the men’s team left an empty seat in the launch for the women’s squad.

The few weeks without a coach did not prevent Radcliffe from establishing dominance early on, however, and Lou Berl replaced Bartman just in time to lead the first varsity eight to the top collegiate finish in the Head of the Charles.

The Black and White carried the momentum from the fall into the spring season, in which the first varsity went undefeated in dual races. The most notable victory came at the Lightweight Invitational in April, where then-No. 2 Radcliffe swept four top-10 teams to establish itself as the team to beat.

“We have great depth on this team right now,” said junior Adelaide Backer after the race. “Since I have come to Harvard, I don’t think we have had such a competitive seat-racing season. I think [our depth] has really increased our competitiveness across the board this year and is really promising going forward.”

Last weekend at Eastern Sprints, the team’s first varsity once again proved its dominance on its way to winning a gold medal in the 1V race for the second straight year. The boat won by more than four seconds with a time of 6:26.536, setting the course record.

After being ranked No. 1 going into nationals last year and yet losing to Stanford in the grand final, the Black and White is not taking anything for granted. The crew will head into IRAs as the favorite to take home the gold, but may once again need to finish with a victory over the Cardinal to claim its first national championship since 1997.

“I think our [second-place] performance [last year] really left us hungry for more,” said co-captain Elizabeth Lenczowski at the start of the season. “We’re looking forward to the challenge of topping that. We’re all really motivated to work hard toward a gold medal at the IRAs this year…. We all came back ready to train hard and win a championship this year.”

—Staff writer Glynis K. Healey can be reached at ghealey@college.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Jacob W. Lynch can be reached at jacoblync@gmail.com.