In most years, a seventh-place finish at the Eastern Sprints by the Radcliffe varsity heavyweight crew will start parents' tongues wagging onshore about how unfair it is that our society places so much value on winning.

But this year, it was a small victory for the Black and White flagship crew.

Seeded ninth entering Sunday's event, held on Lake Waramaug in New Preston, Conn., the Radcliffe heavies won the petit final in 6:36.1 to finish seventh overall.

The varsity lightweight and second novice boats won Radcliffe's only championships. The first novice boat finished second, while the JV heavyweights finished third. Princeton won the overall championship, sweeping the varsity and JV heavyweight races as well as the first novice race.

"Princeton is definitely the leader in women's crew these days," Radcliffe Co-captain Meg Brooks said. "It's kind of a sore spot with us."

Petit Final-Bound

The varsity heavyweights' seventh-place finish followed a season in which the boat failed to win a single regatta and went 2-6 against all crews.

On Sunday, the Black and White needed to finish first or second in a morning heat to qualify for the grand final. Unfortunately, Brown (to whom Radcliffe had lost by 13 seconds during the regular season) and Yale (a 10-second margin of defeat) were in the same heat. Not surprisingly, Radcliffe ended up out of the money.

"For us, the grand final was in the morning," Brooks said. "And we hung closer to them for longer than we did [in the regular season], but we lost them about the 1250-meter mark. It was frustrating, because we raced our best of the season."

In the petit final, Radcliffe defeated three crews it had lost to earlier in the year--Rutgers, Dartmouth and Northeastern.

Dartmouth led Radcliffe by about two seats in the third 500 meters of the race, according to Brooks, but Radcliffe closed the gap with 500 meters to go and pulled away in the sprint, winning 6:36.1 to 6:37.5.

"We were kind of resigned entering the petit final," Brooks said. "But we had to do well, otherwise we would have been mad at ourselves. We knew that if we relaxed, this could be ours."

After Radcliffe and Dartmouth, Northeastern finished third in 6:38.9, Pennsylvania fourth in 6:40.6, Rutgers fifth in 6:41.7 and Syracuse brought up the rear in 6:53.3.

Tough Novices

The first novice boat faced down a false start to revenge one of its two losses this season, topping Brown but losing to Princeton, 6:40.2 to 6:41.5 to 6:45.7.