The crews of Harvard and Radcliffe face a unique challenge this weekend: find time to win the Eastern Sprints championships and write that final tutorial paper, all in a span of two days.

To say the least, it’s no easy task.

And as the Radcliffe lightweight and heavyweight crews set out for Camden, N.J. on Friday, the team will be bringing its oars, its boats, and most definitely its books to the river. Priority number one is bringing home the gold, but the crew wouldn’t mind an A- as well.

“Having the past weekend off was important,” said senior heavyweight captain Katie Gold. “You’re balancing training and preparing for Sprints while making sure everyone has their work done.”

Academics aside, the challenge facing both crews this weekend is daunting enough. Both squads come in as heavy underdogs, with the heavyweights ranking No. 14 in the nation and the lightweights filing in at No. 5.

Both squads, in varying degrees, have struggled this dual season. The lightweights are 1-2, with its only victory coming against seventh-ranked MIT. Against the top competition this year, the team has fallen short.

With losses against No. 2 Princeton and the No. 4 Hoyas on the river this year, the crew has failed to notch an elusive victory against these top squads. Yet the team only lost to Georgetown by one second and raced the Tigers closely on the Charles.

With disappointment comes hope for improvement, and the lightweight crew is banking on it.

“We’ve made some lineup changes,” said senior lightweight captain Lesley Burkett. “So we’ve been working pretty hard over the past two weeks, and [for the first varsity boat], we’ll be able to see how fast this new boat is.”

On the heavyweight side, the crew has struggled just the same, losing out to No. 4 Dartmouth twice, No. 2 Brown once, and No. 1 Yale once during its dual season.

The heavyweights put forth stellar efforts in these races, capped by a mere three-second loss to the Bears.

Yet unlike the Black and White lights, the heavies seem to be peaking at the right time. Coming off of a Beanpot victory two weekends ago, Radcliffe will be rolling into Sprints.

For the heavies, the first varsity is not the only team notching victories. The team’s other boats, anchored by its top-ranked varsity four, has consistently given the Black and White solid efforts throughout the dual season.

As a result, responsibility for the squad’s success this weekend only starts at the top.

“The goals for Sprints are team-wide—we want all three varsity boats to qualify for the Grand finals,” Gold said. “We want to prove ourselves; as NCAA bids are based on our performance at sprints, our performance there is going to be crucial.”

But the varsity eight still knows that in order for the crew to reach the top, the leading boat on the river will have to do just that—lead. And to pace the squad, victories against top-ranked competition is a must.

“We’re definitely going out there to beat crews like Yale and Dartmouth that we were close to but fell against in the dual season,” Gold said. “We’ve worked harder to find more speed in the past weeks. We’ve set ourselves up to race our best this weekend—and I think we can do it.”

From top to bottom, lights to heavies, Eastern Sprints will answer a lot of questions. And though the IRAs and NCAAs loom large in the future, this weekend has an importance all its own.

“This weekend is the championship for a lot of the team,” Burkett said.

—Staff writer Walter E. Howell can be reached at wehowell@fas.harvard.edu.