Harvard Heavyweight Crew Wins Eastern Sprints

Takes heavyweight final and the 2014 Rowe Cup

The undefeated varsity heavies in action at the Sprints
The varsity eight, wearing their gold medals on the dock
The Harvard squad celebrates at Quinsigamond

At the Eastern Sprints regatta on Lake Quinsigamond in Worcester, Massachusetts, this past weekend, the undefeated Harvard heavyweight crew, under new coach Charley Butt, led all the way and defeated Brown by 1.7 seconds en route to winning the big prize. The Eastern Association of Rowing Colleges (EARC) stages the annual regatta, which brings together the top collegiate men’s crews from the eastern half of the country (including Wisconsin). By winning the varsity eight final (view a video of the race shot from the finish line area here), the Crimson locked up their fifth consecutive Rowe Cup, symbolic of overall supremacy in the heavyweight events.

Yale’s huge eight-oared crew (averaging 210-215 pounds), who had not lost prior to this regatta, had been seeded first at the Sprints, ahead of Harvard and Princeton. Yet Yale finished sixth in the final, beating only the Cornell crew rowing in an unusual seventh lane. (A swan had interfered with Cornell’s showing in the morning heats.) A surprise also awaited the Eli in the heats, when a strong Northeastern crew edged out the Blue, who made it into the grand final by less than a second. Northeastern took fourth place in the final behind Harvard, Brown, and Princeton.

The Crimson freshman heavyweight eight, undefeated all season, came second to Brown in the final, and the Harvard JV heavy boat finished fifth in their grand final. The Rowe Cup takes all three heavyweight finals into account.

The Harvard varsity’s time of 5:27.277 was only .27 seconds slower than the course record, thanks to superb rowing conditions at 5:30 p.m., when the race began.

It was Harvard’s thirty-fourth Rowe Cup overall; the Crimson captured its first in 1947.  The City of Worcester Bowl, awarded to the winner of the varsity heavyweight eights, will be retired, and replaced by a new trophy donated by the Friends of Harvard Rowing. The new Harry L. Parker Cup honors the late coach of Harvard’s heavyweight men’s crew, who headed the program for 51 years and died in 2013.

 

You might also like

Harvard College Admits Class of 2028

A smaller undergraduate applicant cohort—the first since Supreme Court ended affirmative action 

Studying ChatGPT Like a Psychologist

Cognitive science helps penetrate the AI “black box”

Reparations as Public Health

A Harvard forum on the racial health gap

Most popular

Harvard College Admits Class of 2028

A smaller undergraduate applicant cohort—the first since Supreme Court ended affirmative action 

Diagnosis by Fiction

The “Healing Quartet,” by “Samuel Shem,” probes medicine—and life.

AWOL from Academics

Behind students' increasing pull toward extracurriculars

More to explore

Darker Days

The current disquiets compared to Harvard’s Vietnam-era traumas

Making Space

The natural history of Junko Yamamoto’s art and architecture

Spellbound on Stage

Actor and young adult novelist Aislinn Brophy