For Harvard men's crew, things didn't exactly go as planned at the Eastern Sprints this past weekend.

The lightweights made a devastating faux pas a quarter of the Way through the race, and then wound up finishing an absurd fifth.

And the heavyweights, though close to eventual winner Brown throughout the race, watched second place evaporate into third after Dartmouth blew past them in the final meters.

Everything was going great for Harvard's lights at the beginning of the race. The Crimson had pulled out to an early advantage and were three seats ahead of Princeton and a half length in front of the rest of the field.

But everything went awry, however, at the 450-meter mark. At that point, Chris McGarry made what turned out to be a fatal mistake. The senior three-man "caught a crab," allowing his oar to bounce awkwardly into the water.

"The crab was a boat-stopper," captain John Roberts said. "It was early, but things were going our way. We were racing exactly how we wanted at that point."

The Crimson could not recover. Although the lights passed Navy and got close to Cornell after being shuffled to the rear, they weren't going to get back into the race. Dartmouth, Princeton, Yale and Cornell all finished--in that order--ahead of Harvard.

"We scrambled to recover as quickly as we could, but in championship racing there is really no room for errors," Roberts said. "After the crab, we could not even get close to the leaders."

The mistake was especially frustrating because the lights were focused solely on Sprints after disappointing performances at the Harvard-Yale-Princeton regatta and against Dartmouth.

"We entered the whole event very focused on the single task of winning the finals," Roberts said. "We only did what was necessary to qualify in our heat. We put it all on the line in the afternoon and then we beat ourselves."

Although the morale shock from this type of loss is usually a problem, it is the least of the Crimson's worries at the point. With their fifthplace finish, the lightweights may not be able to defend their 1993 national championship. Only the top three crews from Sprints go to Nationals.

"If we are going to go, [coach] Charlie Butt will have to get permission from the other schools involved," Roberts said. "Knowing some of the coaches, however, I think they will allow it."

Unquestionably, the Harvard heavyweights will be going to the Nationals.

While undefeated Brown took Sprints for the second consecutive year, Harvard's heavies placed third.

"It was a really good race," junior bow Scott Henderson said. "We were right with Brown the whole time."