With beautiful conditions and a home course advantage working in its favor, the Dartmouth varsity eight overtook Syracuse by over three seconds, finishing with a time of 5:31.3.
"It was a big step forward for us as a crew and as a team," Justin Lerman '10 said.
Unfortunately, the second varsity, varsity four and novice eight boats were unable to maintain the momentum from the varsity eight race and fell to the Orange.
"We just [needed] to convert a little more of the aggression into boat speed," head coach Topher Bordeau said of their performances.
Entering the race, the Big Green had a lot of momentum coming off an impressive performance at the Eastern Sprints where the varsity eight beat No. 1 Brown University to win its heat. In addition, the varsity crew had already beaten Syracuse at Eastern Sprints by about two seconds.
Bordeau said that he was nervous for the men because he knew that Syracuse would come out with extra fire after being defeated by the Big Green the previous week.
"I was interested to see how the guys would respond to that situation, which was fairly new to them," he said.
Despite the added pressure, the varsity crew was able to beat Syracuse by an even larger margin than it had at Eastern Sprints. Lerman noted that the extra challenge of competing against the country's top teams at the Eastern Sprints last weekend helped to cut down the crew's racing time.
Captain Evan Greulich '10 acknowledged that there was an added pressure to do well against Syracuse, as many people in the rowing community viewed Dartmouth's exceptional performance at the Sprints as a one-time occurrence.
"We wanted to prove that our performance wasn't a fluke and that the program has, in fact, gained speed," he said.
Greulich said that having each boat focus on a few points of improvement and focusing on executing the simple techniques also helped the team overall at the Eastern Sprints last week, and against Syracuse this past weekend.
Most notably, the victory marks the first cup race the team has won since 2005. Winning a cup race is particularly exciting, because these types of regattas are older and more prestigious, Greulich said.
Although the varsity eight's victory was impressive, Lerman also pointed out that the victory was not just the product of those on the boat, but of everyone on the team, and that the win helps boost the credibility of the entire Dartmouth crew program.
"This was a great moment for the seniors to have the program go from shambles to a really aggressive and competitive program this year," he said. "Today was symbolic of that. [It is symbolic of] the bunch of guys who have done an intense amount of work to make a relatively small program into a competitive and impressive [one]."
The team will now turn its focus toward the Intercollegiate Rowing Association Championships. Last year, the varsity eight finished in 12th place, a performance upon which Lerman said he was confident that the team can improve.
"Having beat Syracuse today and having the great race that we did at Sprints shows us that we can believe in ourselves that much more," he said. "It's not just a What If' situation it can happen."
Additionally, the team is seeded much higher than last year going into Nationals, which should give it a better chance of getting into the Grand Finals. The varsity eight is currently ranked seventh in the USRowing Collegiate Coaches poll, which is the highest ranking yet for the Big Green.
"Obviously the pool will be more competitive than at Sprints, but we're a competitive crew," Lerman said. "I think we could surprise a lot of people."
The IRA Championships will be held June 3-5 in Camden, N.J.
