The Harvard men's lightweight crew team found itself in good straits on the Schuylkill River on Saturday.

In its first race of the year, the Crimson took first with four of its five boats in Philadelphia against Cornell and Penn.

"There was a strong showing across the squad," co-captain Thomas Fallows said. "Everyone won their race except for the first freshman boat, but even they looked quite strong, and will do pretty well this year."

The Crimson's first varsity boat won with a time of 5:56.2, followed by Cornell at 6:10.3 and Penn at 6:16.9.

"I'd say we were pretty close with Cornell for the first 500 meters before we pulled away," junior coxswain Sujit Raman said. "We rowed a very solid middle thousand, which is what we were looking for."

Harvard's second varsity boat also took home a victory, posting the second-fastest time of the meet after Harvard's first varsity squad. The Crimson posted a time of 6:06.2, 5.6 seconds ahead of Cornell and 23.5 seconds ahead of Penn.

The Crimson's third varsity boat beat Cornell's third boat by 3.17 seconds, with a time of 6:22.18.

For the freshmen, the first boat marked the only blemish on the day, as the Crimson's 6:16.7 was edged out by Cornell's 6:12.6 but was good enough to beat Penn.

The second freshman boat, however, turned in a time of 6:31.6 to beat both Cornell and Penn.

"This was as expected," Fallows said. "A lot of the other teams started racing earlier in the year, so we were quite ready to go out there and show people what we've got."

Cornell and Penn were the right teams for the Crimson to open with this season.

"Penn has had a rough season thus far, losing significantly to Yale and Rutgers," Fallows said. "Cornell has a lot of raw talent, and they were rather shell-shocked. I expect that they will be faster later on in the year."

The goal for the Crimson, of course, is improvement.

"The goal is to just get faster every week," Raman said.

The Radcliffe teams also fared well on the weekend.

The Radcliffe heavyweights beat Northeastern and fell in a close race to Brown on Saturday on the Charles River, finishing second by 4.7 seconds, according to senior Mame Donahue.

"It was the first time we've beaten Northeastern since 1994," Donahue said. "The margin against Brown is closer than they expected, so we scared them a little."

Radcliffe was ahead after the first 1000 meters, but Brown came back in the third 500. Radcliffe made a push in the last 300, but a few oars hit waves, slowing the surge.

The Brown heavyweights had already raced against Princeton, which they beat by a second.

The JV heavyweights had the same result, losing to Brown but beating Northeastern.

The Radcliffe varsity lightweights were also in action Saturday on the Charles, where they beat both Brown and Tufts.