The Dartmouth heavyweight men's crew won some and lost some in Saturday's racing against Yale in Derby, Conn. The first varsity boat came home with a solid victory, while the second varsity and first freshmen boats lost by close margins -- establishing Dartmouth as a competitive team after the first race of the season.
Dartmouth's first varsity boat raced in the inside lane of Yale's course, which has a turn after the halfway mark and requires a stagger start of four and a half seats. The Big Green rowers lost about a seat at the start, but progressively built in length and power to take back the small loss over the first half of the race.
When the turn came, the Green took a move and powered past Yale. Steadily walking ahead for the second half of the race, the rowers increased their rhythm by only two strokes per minute for the sprint, using the power of their strokes rather than their frequency to finish six seconds ahead of Yale.
"When the turn came, we took a 20 through the middle and just sling-shot past them," Justin Jones '02, stroke of the first varsity, said. "Then we steadily walked away."
The second varsity boat had the outside of the turn on the course and closely missed beating Yale. After the opposition gained a boat-length lead in the first 1,000 meters, Dartmouth kept the same margin rounding the outside of the turn. For about 500 meters, Dartmouth closed the gap as they battled toward the finish.
"We rowed with a familiar sense of urgency and aggression that has begun to define us," Jared Klarquist '03 said, stroke of the second varsity boat. In the last 500 meters, both crews sprinted, but Dartmouth didn't have time to fully walk up. Yale finished on top of Dartmouth by less than a second.
"We moved big at the end of the race, though afterwards we all agreed it came too late," said Klarquist. "As far as I can tell, we need to work on technical issues individually and as a whole unit, even though we have the raw strength to win."
The first freshman rowers were less pleased with their performance this weekend, in which they lost by just four seats to Yale.
"We underperformed on Saturday," Joe Gwin '05, the first freshmen's seven-seat, said. "We came off the line too high and never established a solid rhythm."
They took a solid move about two and a half minutes through the race and gained a few seats on Yale, but their opponents immediately moved back up. With 500 meters to go, the Dartmouth freshmen were down by only two seats. After having started too high at the beginning of the race, the rowers could not pull off a solid enough sprint to end up on top.
"What we have to do this week is establish consistency," Gwin said. "When we are on we are a very fast crew. If we bring our best rowing to Rutgers next weekend, I expect to come home with a win."
After a mixed weekend, the heavyweight men's rowers celebrate their first boat's victory and look forward to confronting Rutgers next weekend.
