It’s about time the Harvard men’s lightweights found a permanent place for the Biglin Bowl in Newell Boathouse.

With a dominating sweep over Dartmouth and MIT Saturday, the Crimson captured the Biglin Bowl for the third consecutive time and the ninth time in 10 seasons.

“I think top to bottom it shows how strong of a boathouse we have,” senior seven-seat Michael Kummer said. “Every race this weekend shows the pervasive attitude of competitiveness within the squad.”

After a 1.5-second loss to Georgetown on April 10, the Harvard varsity boat responded with an impressive near 10-second trouncing of second-place Dartmouth. MIT finished almost 30 seconds behind the victorious Crimson boat.

A sloppy start doomed Harvard in its race against Georgetown last week, and a similar sluggish beginning against Cornell and Penn in the season’s first dual race made the Crimson wary of another poor start against Dartmouth and MIT. In its two previous dual races, Harvard was forced to play catch-up after the race’s opening 25 strokes.

“We had been working on our start,” Kummer said. “We knew that at least for the varsity, the start of our race has been weaker than in years past.”

The work paid off for the Crimson Saturday, with Harvard sprinting to an early lead.

When the Crimson settled into its base cadence after the first furious 25 strokes of the race, Harvard found itself almost half a boat up on Dartmouth and MIT.

As the race neared the halfway mark, the Crimson began a slow, steady walk through the Big Green boat.

“We wanted to attack the first five hundred [meters] and renew that attack through the one thousand,” Kummer said, “and consistently think about being aggressive, aggressive, aggressive through the whole race.”

The mentality stuck throughout the middle 1,000 meters of the race. The Crimson increased its lead over its two fading opponents, supplying enough pressure to continually widen the margin in the second half of the course.

It was the impressive start, however, that gave a stronger Harvard boat yet another edge over its competition.

“We wanted to be as aggressive as possible off the start and work very hard to get our boat up to speed,” Kummer said. “We knew that we could rely on a very solid, strong base pace.”

The Crimson crossed the line in 5:50.9, almost six seconds faster than the varsity’s time in the loss to Georgetown. Dartmouth followed in 6:00.7, more than three boat lengths behind Harvard. MIT rounded out the trio in 6:20.1.

The second varsity raced to a 10-second victory over Dartmouth, finishing in 5:57.5. The Big Green made it to the finish in a time of 6:07.6.