“I can’t tell you why, but one of the things we’ve discovered over the last two weeks is that we just respond well to it,” Finelli said. “It’s not like we weren’t working hard before; we were just inefficient. Based on the amount of work we had been putting in, we hadn’t been getting out nearly as much as we would expect.”
Now, the Crimson finally feels like it is reaching its potential. Still, even Finelli admits the revitalized eight remains untested.
“What we have going right now is not like anything we had going before this,” he said. “We’re a new boat. We’re a lot faster and we really don’t know how we stack up against other programs. We just know how we used to stack up.”
The Crimson’s first test will come in its heat against second-seeded Navy, third-seeded Princeton, sixth-seeded Georgetown, tenth-seeded Penn and eleventh-seeded MIT. Harvard beat both the Quakers and the Engineers in the first two weeks of the season, by 3.7 and 10.9 seconds, respectively, but fell to the other three by 9.6, 4.5 and 4.15 seconds, respectively, later in the year. The Crimson will need to beat one of those three, along with Penn and MIT, to earn a berth in the final. Finelli, for one, thinks it can.
“They say it’s our job to peak for Sprints,” he said. “And I feel like we’re in a position to do that.”
For the second boat, the story is much the same; again, Eastern Sprints are a chance to resuscitate what has been a disappointing season thus far.
“The way the sport works is that whoever wins the championship is the champion,” said junior Dan Koski-Karell. “It doesn’t matter if you got beat the entire season. Our season would totally be a success if we win Sprints because that just means, at the end of the season, you’re the fastest boat.”
In fact, Harvard is planning to use its low seeding to its advantage.
“It’s very demoralizing in the middle of a race if you’re the #2 crew and you see the #7 crew hanging with you,” Koski-Karell said.
“We lost to the four teams ahead of us, so it’s not surprising that we’re seeded fifth,” sophomore Chris Gerry added. “But, at the same time, crews above us better not take us for granted, because we’ve gotten faster.”
The Crimson will need to finish no lower than third in its All-Ivy heat—comprised of top-seeded Yale, fourth-seeded Cornell, eighth-seeded Columbia and ninth-seeded Penn—to reach the finals. Harvard has yet to race Columbia, but it is the Crimson that hopes to sneak up on opposing crews.
“We’re not expecting any surprises,” Koski-Karell said. “We’re expecting to be the surprise for other boats.”
The first and second Harvard freshman boats are seeded sixth and third, respectively. A top-three finish in its heat against second-seeded Yale, third-seeded Penn, seventh-seeded Columbia, tenth-seeded Georgetown and eleventh-seeded MIT will allow the first boat to advance to the final, while the second eight faces second-seeded Cornell, sixth-seeded Penn and seventh-seeded MIT in its opening race.
Yet, while they’re attacking from different angles, both the Crimson heavyweights and lightweights have the same goal in mind. Each wants an Eastern Sprints Championship and bragging rights on Lake Quinsigamond, even if they can’t quite say it.