For the first time in four years, the Harvard men's heavyweight crew on Saturday morning lost the Charlie Smith Cup to Northeastern.

According to junior crew member Doug Goodman, the race was expected to be very close.

"They were undefeated coming in," Goodman said. "We knew they were an aggressive starting crew."

The strategy Harvard adopted was to try to stay close to Northeastern at the beginning and then push through them during the last stretch, according to Goodman.

However, "[Northeastern] got off to an extremely good start," Goodman said. The 3/4-length lead Northeastern enjoyed at 500 meters soon grew into a full-length lead at 1000 meters.

Harvard closed the gap and came within three seats at 1500 meters, but Northeastern maintained their lead and crossed the finish at 5:49.56. Harvard finished in 5:51.36.

Saturday also marked another running of the Harvard-Yale-Princeton regatta. Unfortunately, the Harvard men's lightweight crew were defeated by Princeton for the Goldthwait Cup.

"The flat water and essentially [nonexistent] wind made for perfect conditions," junior rower Ryan Wise said.

Initially, the Harvard crew was behind Princeton by four seats and even with Yale, according to senior rower Andrew Wilson.

Although Harvard bested Yale by four seats, they were unable, in Wilson's words, to "get through Princeton."

The Harvard-Princeton-Yale Regatta is the most important race of the season aside from the upcoming Eastern Sprints, according to Wilson.

"The race was the highlight of the season," Wilson said. "It was an exciting race. We had a great sprint, but not great enough."

All three teams went into the race undefeated. Princeton came in first at 5:56.0, Harvard took second at 5:58.5 and Yale finished third with 6:00.0.

According to Wilson, the lightweight crew team looks forward to defending their national championship title in two weeks at the Eastern Sprints.