Raised in competitive Ivy League rowing towns, captain Pat Mulcahy and fellow senior Matt Young were brought up to hate Harvard, their hometown schools’ rival on the water.

But in the end, the two lightweight standouts couldn’t resist the call of the Charles.

Hailing from Ithaca, N.Y., and Philadelphia, Penn., respectively—the homes of lightweight crew powerhouses Cornell and Penn—Mulcahy and Young have long been exposed to top-notch crews.

By living in places where crew was a prominent sport, the two benefited from great coaching and plenty of local competition when they were rowing in high school.

“Some of the high school boats that come from smaller programs in less crew-centered areas only have a couple chances to race at the national big regattas—a couple of them every year,” Young said. “But for us, from the first two weeks into the season, you’d be racing your top competition for the rest of the year, which is nice.”

Inspired by the Cornell crew that rowed in his hometown, Mulcahy eagerly awaited the days when he himself would be rowing at the elite Ivy League level.

“Just seeing the strength and the power and the speed that these boats could produce made it very appealing and definitely something to look forward to, because our high school team was kind of rag-tag, and getting boats moving quickly wasn’t always too easy to do,” Mulcahy said.

But when the time came to move on to collegiate rowing, Mulcahy and Young decided to look past their hometown schools and pack their bags for Harvard, leaving behind the waters where they learned to love crew to make new waves on the Charles.

Although Mulcahy’s father is a professor at Cornell—where his twin brothers are now sophomores—Mulcahy wanted a change from Ithaca, where he had lived his whole life. Looking for a place that combined the bustle of city life with a strong rowing tradition, Mulcahy rekindled his love for rowing on the Charles.

“Rowing on the Charles as compared to the inlet is quite a change,” Mulcahy said. “There’s so many other crews, it really is kind of a mecca of rowing. The Head of the Charles is a good example of that. It’s just so much talent and so many people in such a close area, they kind of feed off each other and really do well.”

As for Young, after watching Harvard’s lightweight varsity rout Penn in an open-water win at the IRA finals, he had his mind almost made up.

“It was just a totally different league of rowing,” Young said, “so that put a little twinkle in my eye.”

But though Harvard had wowed Young once, it took a disastrous recruitment visit to Yale to clinch his decision. Wavering between Harvard and Yale, Young visited both colleges one last time. While at Yale, Young was out on a launch with Bulldogs lightweight crew coach during an afternoon practice when a Yale heavyweight boat collided with a sculler going the wrong direction on the Housatonic River. The sculler was injured in the crash.

“It was kind of a traumatic experience,” Young said. “We had to pull his single out of the water, and it was like Jaws. I had fun with the kids there, they were friendly, but that was kind of a little stain on the entire experience. The kid ended up being okay, though.”

Since Mulcahy and Young joined the Crimson lightweights, the Harvard program has reached some important milestones.

As freshmen in 2005, both Young and Mulcahy watched as the first and second varsity eights swept gold at Eastern Sprints. The win marked the Crimson’s first varsity Sprints win since 1997 and the first time both varsity eights had won gold since 1991. After the pair joined the varsity program in 2006—Young rowed in the varsity eight and Mulcahy in the third varsity during their sophomore season—the lightweights took fourth at Eastern Sprints in 2006 and fifth in 2007.

Disappointing results at Eastern Sprints, however, yielded to excellence at IRAs, where the varsity lightweights have missed a gold medal by a combined 1.138 seconds in two seasons. Harvard earned silver both times, falling by the narrowest of margins to Cornell.

Last year, they took home all three cups up for grabs in dual competition: the Biglin Bowl for wins over Dartmouth, the Haines Cup after sweeping the Navy lights in all three varsity races, and the Goldthwait Cup with a varsity win over Yale and Princeton. The lightweight varsity finished with a 6-1 dual record a season ago, the lone loss coming at the hands of eventual national champion Cornell.

But despite the Crimson’s strong seasons in 2006 and 2007, Cornell bested Harvard twice when it counted most. And in ancient rowing tradition, race winners take home the losing crews’ T-shirts along with their gold medals.

Watching Cornell put on the Crimson colors is an unpleasant sight for any Harvard oarsmen—but especially for Mulcahy, who returned home to see the Cornell crew sporting his shirt during practice in Ithaca.

“I spent a lot of time in the summer out in a single on the inlet, and since we start later, Cornell is typically out for about a month while I’m out there in the mornings,” Mulcahy said. “So I’m seeing the same guys, and they’re wearing the Harvard shirts that they’ve won. It definitely makes you want to work harder.”

With Mulcahy as captain and Young as the lightweight protocol (LP), the other official leadership position in Newell boathouse, the Harvard lightweights have already begun their quest for gold at IRAs, even if it is just October.

And come springtime, the Crimson will meet Cornell and Penn in the first week of the spring racing season. Mulcahy and Young will have their first chance to show off the strength of Harvard’s crew to their hometown teams.

“The really exciting thing for me this season is our first race of the season is at Cornell against Cornell and Penn, so it’s my actual home course, senior year, against the best team in the country for the last two years,” Mulcahy said. “I’d really like to shake things up there. I’m hoping to bring out the Ithaca supporters for Harvard for that one.”

But first comes the Head of the Charles, where the Crimson will have its chance to size up the competition and also to gauge where it stands this season.

Although there is usually just a modest number of spectators at the early-morning races, the Head of the Charles draws the biggest crowd of the season, adding to the excitement of the first big race.

“It’s such a spectacle,” Young said. “It’s not just a race. You just row down the river, and there are so many people on every bridge, on the river banks, just shouting at you, there are bands playing at Harvard…It’s like rowing through a circus.”

—Staff writer Courtney D. Skinner can be reached at cskinner@fas.harvard.edu.