Poring over the score sheet makes Everett’s point evident. Four numbers appear more often than any others: 2, 3, 12 and 13. For every strong finish that Harvard was able to put together, a bad start led to another near the bottom. For the team to be successful next weekend, it will need to post more top finishes and turn its bad starts around so that its worst finishes will be in the middle of the pack, not at the bottom.
The coed team’s second engagement of the weekend also came in the Ocean State, where it sailed for the Moody Trophy at URI. The result—a seventh-place finish—was disappointing, but it was buoyed by a strong finish from Harvard’s B boat, captained by freshman Sloan Devlin and crewed by classmate Mallory Greimann. The duo managed to nab fifth place, helped largely by the second-place finish the tandem managed to post on each day of competition.
Like its coed counterparts, the women’s team struggled at its second site. Sailing close to home at MIT on the familiar waters of the Charles River for the Geiger Trophy, the Crimson took a third seventh-place finish on the weekend. Although the team finished behind river rivals MIT (second) and BU (third), the success of freshmen Jess Baker and Liza Covington in the A boat bodes well for Harvard. The members the class of 2006 finished in third.
Next weekend is the women’s team’s biggest of the season. It will be competing for the Reed Trophy, which is awarded to the New England Champion. The top finishers will also earn a spot at the National Championships in Detroit.
The coed team will have one last warm-up run before its New England Team Race Championships, April 26-27 at Tufts—a competition for the Thompson Trophy at the Coast Guard Academy.
—Staff writer Timothy M. McDonald can be reached at tmcdonal@fas.harvard.edu.