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Radcliffe Novice Rowers Dominate First Fall Season

There may be a lot of hype, especially after The Game, that a certain school in New Haven falls short of fair Harvard, but for freshman Sophia Becker, it wasn’t the strength of the football team that swayed her decision to come to Cambridge.

“I was going to play soccer at Yale, but [assistant coach] Cory [Bosworth] and Liz saved me,” Becker quipped. “[Now], here I am, rowing at Harvard, and there really is no other place I’d rather be.”

Although Becker had just a year of crew under her belt at the Essex Rowing Club, unlike the other recruits who had rowed all through high school, she attributes her success on the water to soccer, a sport she had played her entire life.

“Soccer is definitely a big emphasis on legs, and so is rowing,” Becker said. “I think that the strength [necessary for crew] is definitely something that I’ve had my whole life, so that’s been really helpful. [Soccer is] also a focused sport, like rowing is…so I’ve taken what I’ve known from soccer and applied it to rowing and it’s made me better.”

Despite her lack of crew experience, Becker’s erg times sparked the attention of the heavyweight coaches, who recruited her to Harvard. Ever since, the freshman has flourished on the team.

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Although O’Leary notes that it is optimal to recruit women with crew experience, she appreciates the advantages that rowers like Becker with previous athletic ability bring to the team.

“If you get a great athlete, [then] they understand competition, they understand training, they understand hard work, they understand consistency, [and] they understand success and failure and how you come back from that,” O’Leary said. “If they already have those basic ingredients, I can teach them how to row.”

FROM THE COURT TO THE RIVER

Coming into Harvard, sophomore Kelly Whelan probably had a very different idea of the direction her Crimson athletic career would take.

“I started training competitively for tennis when I was six,” Whelan said. “My older sister played D1 tennis [and] my mom played D1 tennis, so it’s kind of a family sport.”

Whelan was recruited by Harvard to play tennis and did just that her freshman year, but after over a decade on the court, she decided to take her talents to the water.

“At the end of [freshman] year, I decided I needed a change, and so I took the summer to make my decision,” Whelan said. “I had been talking to Liz a little bit, and it just seemed like a really good opportunity, so I just walked on [to the team].”

Whelan may not have joined the team until her sophomore year, but she says her unique start with the sport actually gave her an advantage on the water.

“I think a big part of the freshman year athletic experience is really learning how to be an athlete at Harvard,” Whelan said. “I’m not as convinced that it’s really that sport-specific.”

Out of the roughly 40 walk-ons that Radcliffe crew receives every year, O’Leary estimates that between five and 15 ultimately stay with the sport. Although the walk-ons are not part of her original crew class, the coach cherishes the opportunity to spread the sport of crew to potential rowers who may never have been exposed to the sport before.

“I love walk-ons because they’re sort of the bonus to your recruiting class. We have these great kids whom we’ve recruited, and we’re really excited about them, and we think this is going to be the core of this freshman/novice class,” O’Leary said. “[But for those] who stay with the sport, it’s just really fun to see how they, over time in their freshman year, just add more and more to the personality and the energy and the success of the novice team, and they can have a big impact pretty fast.”

While the Black and White has been characterized by success in the past, taking the Ivy championship last year and placing multiple athletes on Olympic teams, O’Leary recognizes the edge that this unbeaten novice class provides for Radcliffe crew.

“When you have a strong and successful freshmen class, that sort of pushes everybody,” O’Leary said. “Yes, you like to have the top, most experienced returning athletes from the varsity eight who won the varsity eight last year to be pulling people up. But to have the younger class pushing everybody up is just going to bring up the expectation and opportunity for the whole team.”

—Staff writer Samantha Lin can be reached at samanthalin@college.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Cordelia F. Mendez can be reached at cordeliamendez@college.harvard.edu

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