Harvard’s success at IRAs this year has not changed many of the rowers’ view that training at Red Top for the Harvard-Yale regatta should take a higher priority.

“[Red Top] is like a camp where you’re bonding with your teammates,” said captain Mike Skey, sixth seat of the second varsity boat. “You get to know kids really well, you make rockets out in the field and you fly kites. It’s a really good time. You don’t experience that at [IRAs]. Here you’re at a hotel all day and laying in bed watching TV, then you go and race.”

The second varsity, which entered IRAs undefeated like the first varsity, could not maintain its record in its first meetings with the top western crews, California and Washington. In that race, the Golden Bears jumped out ahead early and both the Huskies and the Crimson spent the whole race trying to catch up.

In the freshman race, Princeton maintained its season-long dominance. The Tiger freshmen, who Skey believes are faster than Princeton’s varsity, won by almost three seconds over California and Harvard. The Golden Bears edged the Crimson by just 14-hundredths of a second.

“Given another 20 meters [the freshmen] would have taken [California],” Skey said.

Although the second varsity and freshman boats did not win their races, they contributed to the overall Harvard victory of the Ten Eyck trophy. They were also the boats that pushed the first varsity throughout the year to its unprecedented level of success.

“Every single person in the boathouse receives some credit for the success of the varsity because at some point they rowed and practiced with them,” Blomquist said. “They pushed as along. Granted it comes down to us to racing to our potential, but our potential was pulled up by everyone in the boathouse.”

—Staff writer David R. De Remer can be reached at remer@fas.harvard.edu.