The Harvard lightweight crew team made a statement on Sunday, and it made it in a big way.

The Crimson, which was the second-seeded crew at Sunday's Eastern Sprints in Worcester, delivered a performance that no rival crew could come close to matching, and it now seems unlikely that Harvard will be anything below a number-one seed for the rest of the season.

The Crimson covered the 2000-meter course on Lake Quinsigamond in 5:48, beating second-place Princeton by open water. The Tigers crossed the line in 5:53, ahead of third-place Cornell and fourth-place Yale.

The Elis' disappointing performance was almost as big a story as the Crimson's dominance. Yale was the top-seeded crew at the Sprints, and had beaten Harvard earlier this year in the Goldthwait Cup.

On Sunday, however, Yale was never in the race.

"They might have gone in a little overconfident," Harvard's Tom Caughey said. "Once we passed them, they didn't have too much left. They let their mindset beat them."

The Crimson soundly beat them, as well, thanks largely to Caughay. Before Sunday's regatta, Caughay was a member of the junior varsity boat, but for the Sprints, he was summoned to the varsity as the stroke. The transition marked the second year in a row that Caughay was promoted for the Sprints.

"It wasn't a total surprise," Caughey said. "[The junior varsity] had been undefeated during the season, and the varsity had lost at the HYP's and at Yale. I thought [getting called up] might happen, but when it did, I was surprised."

The big surprise on Sunday, however, was for the other lightweight crews who will now have to deal with the Crimson at the IRA's in two weeks and at the Elite Nationals in June.