So far, and so close.

Such was the contradictory tale for the Harvard varsity lightweights in 2006.

A perpetual game of musical chairs—resulting in countless lineup changes throughout the spring—added to an already frustrating dual season wrought with inconsistency and underachievement.

It wasn’t until June, until the last strokes of the 2006 season, that the Crimson showed how far it had come on a Saturday afternoon in Camden.

Far enough to make the 2006 lightweight IRA final the most thrilling in recent memory. And close enough to make 2007 a campaign for the national title even more important for those who came 0.076 seconds short a season ago.

“We thought we’d won—we were one seat up, and you look over and you hear the beep and think, I think I was a little bit ahead of their seven-seat,” junior Moritz Hafner says. “But our boat was a little bit shorter. Still, it took them more than 15 minutes to really figure it out by looking at the photo.”

Only the minutest fraction of Cornell’s bow ball kept Harvard from snatching its eighth national title.

“How we ended the season last year will just fuel our competitive spirit this season,” senior Brian Aldrich says. “I definitely want one after what happened last year.”

The Crimson limped into Eastern Sprints with three consecutive dual losses. Seats were still up for grabs in both varsity eights, Harvard had not won in over a month, and the confidence that characterized an unflappable 2005 varsity was wanting throughout 2006. Stretches of brilliance followed maddening spells of mediocrity, and the Crimson was never quite sure which boat would toe the line on race day.

“Last season we didn’t get it going for a really long time,” Hafner says. “It was a huge problem—we always had the first boat against the second boat in practice, and they were always kind of the same speed. And then we lost a lot of races, raced poorly, and we never knew why or what it was.”

By all estimates, Harvard had not come far enough in its spring dual campaign. Disappointments against Yale, Navy, and Dartmouth dropped Harvard to No. 5 before Eastern Sprints.

“We learned our lesson the hard way last year,” captain Nick Downing says. “In March and April, it wasn’t quite going our way, and we weren’t being very positive.”

A fourth-place finish at Sprints for both varsity eights left even more in doubt, as the Crimson failed to reach the winners’ dock after a one-two varsity sweep in 2005.

But in the two weeks separating Sprints from IRAs, the Crimson settled into permanent lineups. Stability replaced unpredictability, and a new attitude overtook Newell Boathouse.

“We just started to bring out the positive in everything that we were doing in May, and it started going really well,” Downing says. “We really enjoyed what we were doing, and we were able to improve practice after practice.”

Dominance in June is characteristic of Charley Butt’s crews, which have won seven of 17 IRA titles—three more than any other program.

But last June’s race had to be special, even by Butt’s standards.

After the turmoil of April and May, when uncertainty reigned supreme for six weeks in Newell Boathouse, Harvard finally got all 2,000 meters right.

Throughout the dual season, the Crimson tanked after settling into a base cadence off the race’s opening high 20. So in Camden, Harvard opted not to settle, racing the whole 2,000 meters at an unfathomable 41 strokes per minute.

At the halfway point, the Crimson stood dead even with Cornell. The boats exchanged inches in the last 1,000 meters, hurtling down the course in a back-and-forth slugfest made more dramatic by the alternating surge of each crew’s bow ball.

Everyone expected No. 1 Cornell to be up front.

But No. 5 Harvard? At a 41? By all counts, the Crimson should have been gassed by the final 500 meters.

“Apparently, [heavyweight coach] Harry Parker came up to some of the guys and said, ‘Congratulations, guys. That’s the bravest race I’ve ever seen rowed,’” Hafner says.

The Crimson came up just 0.076 seconds short, falling in the narrowest of photo finishes to Cornell—the same crew that had turned Sprints into a lopsided race for second two weeks earlier. The Big Red had the advantage of racing in a longer boat, and the IRA officials had the unenviable task of awarding one gold medal into a race in which there were two valid champions.

“I know we got the short end of the stick, but that race at IRAs last year—I’ve never been a part of an effort that intense and that focused,” says senior coxswain Mark Adomanis, who is also a Crimson editor. “I really can’t think of a race that, even while it was happening, it was just an awareness that ‘Wow, we really did step it up from the level where we’d been earlier in the year.’ All nine of us completely made our minds up that we were going out there and we were going to get it done.”

Get it done they did—but not done enough. The effort was the best the team put out all season, and unquestionably the Crimson’s most complete 2,000 meters of the year.

But after coming so far, Harvard came up just short.

Short enough to make 2007 a campaign to end Harvard’s longest drought at IRAs since the lightweight final was introduced in 1990.

“Nothing is worse than coming in second in a race,” Hafner says. “But it gives us a lot of confidence this year, because after last season, we were finally able to solve the problem. We finally found the key in the end.”

—Staff writer Aidan E. Tait can be reached at atait@fas.harvard.edu.