Harvard’s top championship four entry took fourth. The Crimson prioritized its top eight ahead of its top four, but not all programs followed suit, meaning that Harvard’s rowers were competing against many programs’ top athletes.

“It was not our best row; it was a pretty ... rocky row,” said senior bow seat Nick Jordan. “But we were very aggressive with it, so we had a good result.”

While the Crimson fell to the University of Wisconsin, the University of California, and the U.S. Naval Academy, it was able to beat Stanford’s top four and the U.S. rowing development team entry.

Harvard’s second championship entry took 15th, and its third champ eight took 21st. In Saturday’s club eight events, the Crimson heavyweights posted third and 22nd place finishes.

LIGHTWEIGHTS

Only the USRowing eight, stroked by Will Newell ’11, separated the Harvard lightweights from sharing the limelight with the Crimson heavyweights. Harvard will just have to be content with being the fastest collegiate crew by nearly 14 seconds.

Starting third behind Princeton and Cornell, the Crimson 1V surged into second place before it got to Newell Boathouse.

“We were catching up to Cornell and sort of caught them by the Weeks footbridge,” said junior four seat Stu Taylor. “We passed Cornell going past Weld.”

“We just ripped it out,” added sophomore bow seat Michael Wales. “It was so cool to be in the boat with a bunch of legends ... I had a blast. It was just a lot of fun, the whole thing.”

Harvard’s second varsity, meanwhile, took 13th overall. The Crimson was the second fastest 2V and finished a little over a second behind the 12th-place Tigers’ 2V.

“It’s a building process for the JV this season,” said captain and six seat Tom Nesel. “We started off pretty well. We held off many fast crews into Eliot Bridge ... A lot of guys had a lot of heart, and they gave it all they had.”

Newell, captain of the 2010-2011 team, and the USRowing boat won by over 14 seconds.

After the top two eights, Harvard’s next priority boat was the lightweight four, which also took 13th overall.

“There were some very good stretches,” said senior bow seat Collin Rees. “We felt like we really got it going.”

The Crimson lightweights’ other two events were the club eight and the club four. Competing against mostly heavyweight crews, Harvard took third in the club four and 20th in the club eight.

“This weekend was probably one of our best showings,” Taylor said.

—Staff writer Christina C. McClintock can be reached at ccmcclin@college.harvard.edu.