"Right now we're just trying to improve every week," heavyweight Jeff Castellano said. "It's only the off season so we're just working on our aerobic endurance and putting everything together."
"We stayed tough throughout and had a pretty good first mile, so I think we did okay," he added. "We just need to keep working hard and build from this."
Harvard's lightweight team, traditionally weaker in the fall than in the spring, entered the race searching for respectability and certainly succeeded in that end.
Off the starting line, the Crimson jumped out to a fast 38 strokes-per-minute pace and was able to maintain a steady 34-stroke pace throughout.
Beginning behind the New York Athletic Club, the Lightweights immediately began gaining ground on them and moving up the field.
By the end of the race, the Harvard Lightweights finished three and a half seconds ahead of NYAC and had secured a sixth place finish, only three seconds behind fifth-place Yale.
"We've been working really hard to be competitive in the fall, and today we were able to go out and be real aggressive," senior lightweight Tom Fallows said. "We still have some technical stuff to polish up on for next weekend at Princeton, but in general I was happy with our performance today."