Tag Archive: M. Crew

  1. HEAVYWEIGHT CREW | Bulldogs sweep opening regatta

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    Despite cold wind, choppy water, and racing only three boats against Brown’s five, the heavyweight crew team managed to sweep all three races of its season-opening regatta on Saturday morning.

    Yale hosted Brown at the Gilder Boathouse in Derby, Conn., for the annual Yale-Brown regatta, which consisted of three races: the freshman eight, the junior varsity eight and the varsity eight. The Bulldogs have not won this varsity race in five years and have not swept the regatta in at least 10 years.

    “It was incredibly gratifying to see the work we have put in over the last seven months begin to pay off,” varsity oarsman Zach Johnson ’14 said. “Most of the rowing community was expecting Brown not to have a problem with us. This was an excellent start to the season.”

    Fellow oarsman Joe Alagna ’12 and varsity coxswain Oliver Fletcher ’14 agreed, but added that the team will not rest on its laurels of the day and will continue to improve throughout the season.

    “It’s still very early days [in the season], and we won’t let any complacency creep into our mindset for the months ahead,” Fletcher said.

    The Bulldogs certainly did not show complacency on Saturday morning. In the first race of the day, their first freshman eight boat bested the Bears’ top freshmen by a full boat length, with times of 6:21.6 to 6:24 for the 2000m course on the Housatonic River. Brown’s second freshman boat was 40 seconds back.

    During the regatta, the upstream headwind started to pick up and create particularly rough water in the middle of the course, where the river turns slightly. The boathouse commentator described these worsening adverse conditions as “rowable, but not ideal for the early season,” and as the morning went on, race times got progressively slower.

    “In a head wind like that it becomes increasingly hard to control your blade, particularly as fatigue sets in,” Johnson said.

    In the second race, Yale’s JV 8+ managed to get a third of a boat length lead on Brown’s JV 8+ by the 800m mark, despite a slower race cadence. The Bulldogs held onto their lead in this hotly contested race, crossing the line at 6:26.7 — half a boat length ahead of Brown at 6:27.9. Brown’s second JV boat fell behind early on and finished at 6:44.1.

    Junior varsity coxswain Morgan Welch ’12 said her crew’s technique is well suited to the harsh conditions and that the oarsmen stayed relaxed and focused.

    “Our stroke rate was slightly lower than usual because of the headwind, but the guys moved very efficiently, and we walked away from Brown while rating a few beats lower,” Welch said.

    While the two varsity squads were positioning themselves at the starting line in preparation for their race, the main and final event of the day, the Bears discovered that one of the footplates in their boat was broken. A launch boat had to return to the boathouse two kilometers down the river to fetch a replacement part, forcing the rowers to sit at the start line for 20 minutes.

    During the delay, Alagna said that Fletcher helped the crew to stay warm and focused on the race. He added that the coaching staff has prepared the rowers “to face even the toughest conditions.”

    “We tried to keep our oars higher off the water and away from the chop and waves,” he said. “Our results are a testament to that.”

    The Bulldogs were positioned in the lane in the middle of the river, which meant the water was choppier for them and allowed the Bears to gain nearly a boat length’s advantage in the first half of the race, Johnson said.

    However, Yale had the advantage of being on the inside of the mid-course turn and managed to make up time and level the boats. In the last 1000 meters of the race, Yale’s varsity was able to pull ahead and crossed the finish line at 6:43.7, beating the Bears by 1.9 seconds.

    Johnson noted that in neutral conditions, the team could complete the same course around a full minute faster.

    The Blue and White only raced three boats in the regatta because of a smaller roster this year. Last year, the team graduated a large senior class, and head coach Stephen Gladstone set higher expectations of the oarsmen returning after the summer, pushing some less committed athletes to leave the team.

    “At the end of last season, the coach made it clear that only people who were entirely committed to the team and to going fast were welcome back,” Johnson said, adding that basic fitness requirements were introduced for team members. “The idea was essentially to create a small elite unit, and that is exactly what we have done.”

    Johnson said the weekend’s victories prove the smaller squad is a “force to be reckoned with.”

    The heavyweight crew team will next race on April 7 against Dartmouth, in the last home regatta of the season.

  2. CREW | Heavyweight begins season at home

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    The heavyweight crew team will kick off its spring season this weekend with the first of two consecutive home regattas at the Gilder Boathouse in Derby, Conn.

    Yale’s varsity 8+, junior varsity 8+ and freshman 8+ boats will race against Brown on the Housatonic River, starting at 10 a.m. on Saturday. They intend to defend their home turf.

    “[The home river advantage] adds a personal aspect to the race, it gives you an edge,” varsity 8+ rower Zach Johnson ’14 said. “You’ll be damned if you’re going to let another crew come to your course and beat you in front of your friends and family. Our goal for this race is to make a statement.”

    Johnson and teammate Joe Alagna ’12 both noted that while being familiar with the course and recognizing landmarks can help, “at the end of the day, the faster crew always wins.”

    Four team members interviewed said that they expect a tough race against Brown, as against any Eastern Sprints league opponent, but that they feel Yale is capable of coming away with a win.

    Alagna said the team is training harder and more effectively than prior seasons and focusing on speed, partially because of fewer oarsmen on the roster than in previous years.

    Johnson added, “Even at this early point in the season, we can tell that we are much faster than we were last year. All we need to do is prove it.”

    This time last year, the Bulldogs raced the Bears in Providence, R.I., losing the varsity 8+ by 0.43 seconds and the freshman 8+ by 1.02 seconds. However, Yale’s second, third and fourth varsity 8+ boats won their races.

    Even though the contentious Eastern Sprints are scheduled for May 13 and May 31, and the Intercollegiate Rowing Association National Championships is not until June 2, team captain Tom Dethlefs ’12 said that the early races are important for gaining experience and establishing Yale’s speed in the Eastern Sprints league. He added that tough competition early in the season is good preparation for the championships in May and June.

    “The rowing season goes all the way through June, so plenty of things can change, but it’s always good to start out on a strong note,” Dethlefs said. “Everyone gets faster over the next few months, so it’s a good indicator if we can start the season at a higher base level than other crews in the field.”

    Last year, Yale’s varsity 8+ boat finished 10th in the nation at the IRA Regatta — a marginal improvement from the 11th place finish in 2010.

  3. CREW | Bulldogs compete in final fall regatta

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    On the heels of Saturday’s unexpected snowstorm, the Yale men’s lightweight and women’s crew teams concluded their fall seasons this past Sunday at the Princeton Three-Mile Chase.

    Boats from both teams finished in the top five at the invitational race hosted on Lake Carnegie in Princeton, N.J. In the final regatta of the season the Bulldog men took fourth place in the varsity eights event, finishing in 13:32.2 and beating out Ivy foes from Cornell, Columbia, Penn and Dartmouth. Harvard won the race in 13:15.4. Coach Andy Card went into the race wanting to improve on the team’s race the week before at the Head of the Charles, and while he said the team did improve, there is still much to work on over the winter.

    “Some things we did better, some things were left on the table,” Card said in an email to the News. “I know our captain Dave Walker ’12was a bit displeased with his boat’s first half of the race. Still, we are following our own timetable as we always do, and we won’t be rushed.”

    Yale’s ‘B’ crew also left a strong impression on the 27 crew field. As the first ‘B’ crew to cross the line, it finished eighth in 13:44.6 and beat out the ‘A’ crews from Penn, Dartmouth and Delaware. Many Yale rowers also raced a second time in a fours or pairs event. Yale took eighth in the fours event and second in the pairs event.

    Walker commended the freshmen eight for the fourth place finish in the freshmen race.

    “All in all, I’m very happy with how the younger levels of the team performed and are stepping up to the level of the older guys,” Walker said.

    The women’s crew team also raced its final regatta, finishing off its fall season with solid performances.

    Entering the race, the Bulldogs looked to build off the team’s success this fall.

    The varsity eight took third place in the 49 boat field with a time of 14:53.50, finishing behind the crews from Virginia and Princeton while beating out Ivy foes from Cornell, Dartmouth, Penn, Brown and Columbia. The women’s novice boat took 14th in the novice open 8+ final with a time of 18:15.91.

    For both crew teams, the fall season has provided an opportunity to see individual and team strengths and weaknesses.

    The season also gave the Bulldogs insightinto how they compare to their Ivy League and national competition.

    Women’s crew captain Kathleen O’Keefe said the Princeton Chase showed the team where it stands in the spring racing field.

    Walker added, “The main goal of the fall season is really team development. The fall was very successful in that we exposed a lot of things we need to work on and will go in to the winter with an

    understanding of what we need to do to get ready for the spring.”

    With the conclusion of the fall season, the teams now head indoors for intense winter training in preparation for the championship spring season. Both teams will use the winter to build on their strengths and work to improve their weaknesses in order to lay the foundation for a successful spring season.

    O’Keefe said the women’s team will have to work hard to be competitive in the spring.

    Card added that the lightweight crew team’s fundamentals are solid, but the team is looking to move to the next level over the winter.

    “There are just so many things that are different between the fall 5ks and the spring 2ks that you cannot conflate the two,” he said. “So we know a little more now than we did on Saturday, but we don’t know how things will play out in the spring.”

    The men’s lightweight team looks to repeat its2011 National Championship season while the women’s team aims to improve upon its 11th place finish at the 2011 NCAA

    Championships. The women’s crew and the lightweight men’s crew will be back on the water at the Connell Cup in New York, New York on Mar. 24.

  4. CREW | Women’s and lightweight crew score top finishes

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    The Bulldogs had a strong showing in Cambridge, Mass. this past weekend at the world’s largest two-day rowing race, the Head of the Charles Regatta. Boats from the women’s crew and men’s lightweight crew teams notched up several top-five finishes.

    Although the heavyweight crew team did not fare quite so well — its championship four and eight settled for 11th and 17th places, respectively ­— Yale’s other two crew teams tasted success as their boats glided through the three-mile Charles River course. Still, two head coaches and several rowers said the weekend’s racing does not necessarily predict future success in the more competitive spring season.

    “I thought both [lightweight four] crews had good rows — not perfect by any stretch,” lightweight crew head coach Andy Card said. “Certainly there are things that can be improved, but these will come with time. We only just started rowing a month ago, after all.”

    His two championship four boats beat out all the other collegiate crew teams in their division, finishing second and third behind the New York Athletic Club Pan-Am Games boat by 32 and 72 seconds, respectively. With the result, Yale lightweight crew has topped the pack of collegiate championship four boats for seven straight years. The team’s championship eight boat, meanwhile, closed in fifth place.

    The women’s crew squad saw similarly strong performances; its championship eight boat took home a fourth-place finish on Sunday, while its club eight boat slotted in second on Saturday.

    “The Head of the Charles is always a hectic race, but all three boats raced well and did a good job of focusing internally,” captain Kathleen O’Keefe ’12 said. “The race also showed us areas where the team needs to improve in order to be highly competitive this spring.”

    Head coach William Porter said the team’s championship eight boat could have gone faster had Brown’s slower boat not blocked it for the first mile and a half of the race. Race rules state that slower crews should yield to faster crews passing them, he explained.

    Indeed, the Head of the Charles “head-race” format, in which boats race single file, starting seconds after each other, and the winner is the boat with the quickest final time, means the competition is not indicative of how teams are shaping up for the spring racing season, heavyweight crew head coach Steve Gladstone said.

    Where a boat starts in the race makes a “big difference” because later boats usually experience choppier water, he explained. Nevertheless, he said he was “absolutely not satisfied” with the results his boats achieved in the championship races.

    “We had a solid showing at the Charles,” captain Tom Dethlefs ’12 added. “We’ve got a small team with a lot of young talent so it was good to give them an opportunity to race at the most attended regatta in the world.”

    Dethlefs said the weekend’s results do not indicate how competitive the spring season will be, except that there will be tight competition throughout the field. Before spring racing kicks off with a March 24 race against Brown, the team will work on its fitness and go on a seven-day training camp in Florida starting Dec. 28, Gladstone said.

    “People try to parse the results from the fall, but you just can’t do that,” Card said, explaining that in lightweight crew competition there is no weigh-in during the fall season that is similar to the spring weigh-in.

    In women’s crew, however, fall results can be a good indicator of spring results, Porter said. The fall allows the team to observe the competition and train through the winter to close the gap on or stay ahead of competition.

    The lightweight crew and women’s crew teams will take to the water one final time before winter break, at the Oct. 30 Princeton Chase in Princeton, N.J.

  5. LIGHTWEIGHT CREW | Elis win two on the Housatonic

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    Yale’s lightweight crew team is off to a quick start in the fall season after the 17th annual Head of the Housatonic regatta on Saturday.

    The varsity team took first place in two out of eight races. In the Men’s Collegiate 8+, the Elis raced against the Yale heavyweights and a boat from Williams College. In the Masters/Open 8+ they were up against the New York Athletic Club, among other club teams.

    The Bulldogs’ top boat posted the fastest time in both the Men’s Collegiate 8+ event as well as the Men’s Masters/Open 8+, with times of 14:34 and 14:22 respectively.

    Two other Yale boats raced in the Men’s Collegiate 8+ race, placing fifth and seventh in 15:06 and 15:10. Another eight raced in the Men’s Masters/Open 8+, finishing third in 14:44, and three four-boats raced in the Men’s Collegiate 4+, finishing fourth, fifth and seventh in 17:00, 17:12 and 17:47 respectively.

    The first race of the season took place on the Housatonic River in Shelton, Conn., which is Yale’s home course. The 2.7-mile course extends upstream from the Indian Well State Park to the New Haven Rowing Club boathouse in Oxford, Conn. Men’s lightweight crew coach Andy Card said Yale’s team rows there everyday, but usually not in the upstream direction as it did in this race.

    Card said the race was head-style with the boats starting single-file, 10 to 15 seconds apart. They race “against the clock and each other,” he said.

    “The first race [of the season] is always a bit of an unknown,” Card said. “These combinations haven’t rowed together very much as an eight.” Still, he added, the Head of the Housatonic is a great place to start.

    Captain David Walker ’12 agreed, saying the race was a good opportunity to test the team early in the season.

    “The entire team has been training hard this fall, and I am pleased with our performance in our first race,” Walker said. “We raced well and will continue to train hard to get faster throughout the fall.”

    Skylar Prill ’12 added that this race was a great opportunity to practice making adjustments as a group, which will help to add speed.

    Card said the goals for the season include integrating sophomores to the varsity level, incorporating freshmen and helping seniors acclimate to their new leadership positions.

    The lightweight crew team’s next race is scheduled for October 23 and 24 at the Head of the Charles in Boston, which is the world’s largest regatta.

  6. M. CREW | Gladstone seeks new crew culture

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    After three decades coaching at Berkeley and Brown and 11 Intercollegiate Rowing Association National Championship titles, Steve Gladstone took the job as head coach of men’s heavyweight crew to much hype in August 2010. Over the past year, he has made major changes to the team’s culture and training regime, with mixed results. The team’s fall season kicks off Saturday with the Head of the Housatonic. He spoke to the News Wednesday about the past year and his outlook on the team.

    Q: How did you find your first year here?

    A: When you arrive at a new situation, the most important thing to deal with what’s present, and, in a word, what the culture is. I spent the good part of the year digesting that and working to build some changes in the boat training and more importantly, the mindset toward the training.

    Q: What changes have you made?

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    A: The major changes primarily related to technical elements of the training. But underpinning that is a more positive sense of people being in this process together. It’s not sufficient to simply train individually at a high level — if you are going to succeed, with nine people in a boat, you have to learn to work together. I’ve also worked to foster a tone that it’s possible to go fast without overthinking the whole process. The fundamentals are teamwork and hard work, and you have to approach them directly.

    Q: What did you think of the team’s performances last season?

    A: There were moments where there were life-signs. That being said, at the critical moments, I would say we underperformed. I would say, for instance, at the IRA [National Championships, where the Bulldogs finished in 10th place].

    Q: How is the team shaping up for this weekend’s Head of the Housatonic?

    A: Basically, the fall is devoted to hard training and working very carefully at low rates to improve the technical efficiency. That’s the most important objective of the fall. I won’t be putting together a boat until tomorrow. The athletes will give full measure at the time and event but the training is not tailored for being fast. I would hope the crew would be fast but I would characterize the event as a training exercise for the spring. [Still,] from what I’ve seen in the opening weeks, the tone of the squad is entirely different. Top to bottom, the attitude is terrific. I’m optimistic.

    Q: What do you think of the current composition of the crew team?

    A: I think there’s a good mix. There are some seniors who have demonstrated really high capabilities: Tom Dethlefs ’12, who was a gold medalist at the U23 World Championships, and of course Joseph Alagna ’12, who was a varsity oarsman last year. Those two seniors jump out as the most distinguished, but there are also strong sophomores and juniors.

    Q: Three rowers — Dethlefs, Owen Symington ’14 and Harry Picone ’13 — competed at international regattas over the summer. What do you think of that?

    A: There’s no question that exposure to training and racing at that level has a very positive impact on the Yale boat. What I would say is that the more guys who engage in that over the summer, the stronger we’ll be.

    Q: What do you think of team’s overall culture?

    A: I think that the Yale culture, the University’s culture, is not a whole lot different from what I’ve experienced at other universities. What it amounts to, as always, is getting a group of people who are willing to give full measure to be the best at what they do, and that’s what generates confidence over the long haul, and that ultimately determines successful racing.

    When I arrived a year ago in August, I told them they didn’t need to concern themselves with training protocol or what they’re being taught on the water — that’s my area. That template is not, in and of itself, is not going to guarantee success. What does is the diligence and cooperative hard work they bring to it. If they do that, then the protocol is proven, through championships.

  7. LIGHTWEIGHT CREW | Harvard and Yale boats clash

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    The Yale-Harvard rivalry was played out in full force on the water this summer, with both schools’ crews vying against each other for national and international acclaim.

    While the Bulldogs beat out Harvard’s varsity boat in a photo finish to claim the June 2-4 Intercollegiate National Rowing Championships, the Crimson enacted revenge on July 1 through their heavyweight freshman boat, which eliminated the Yale boat from the Henley Royal Regatta at the quarterfinal stage.

    “[The summer’s results are] just confirmation that if you keep on with the lightweight ethic — work hard, be light and love the team — good things will happen,” said head coach Andy Card, who has led the team to five national titles since taking the reins in 1990.

    This year’s IRA regatta victory was not easily won. As crews from Harvard and Yale pulled over the finish line, neither squad knew which would be the victor. Five minutes later, it was announced that Yale had clinched the lightweight crew national championship by just 0.02 seconds.

    “We all just went crazy,” said captain Andrew Hakanson ’11, describing the team’s reaction to the announcement. “From my perspective, this year was amazing, but it’s actually been a four-year effort … and it’s great finally to win the national championships.”

    While the varsity boat had a third-place finish at the May 15 Eastern Sprints, Will Zeng ’11, who sat in the four seat at the IRA Regatta, said the crew was not content to sit on that result.

    “The last thing that Card told us before we launched was: ‘Finish it,’” he said. “In the last race of our last season, we wanted to finish the whole thing.”

    And finish it they did. The Elis pulled ahead with the Crimson in the last 500 meters of the 2,000-meter race, edging out the Harvard boat by a 0.02-second margin.

    In claiming the national title, the first varsity boat also won the opportunity to represent the lightweight crew class in the Temple Challenge Cup at the Henley, which took place between June 29 and July 3 on the River Thames in Henley-on-Thames, England.

    At Henley, however, the Bulldogs saw a reversal of fortune and finished three-quarters of a length behind Harvard’s heavyweight freshman eight in the quarterfinal stage.

    Although the Yale boat was in the lead at the Barrier — the first of two progress markers along the approximately 2,112-meter course — by the Fawley, the Crimson had struck ahead, holding on to finish the race in a time of 6:12, a new record for the competition.

    “[Harvard] never broke us, although they did do something in the middle with heavyweight power that we just couldn’t match,” Card said.

    Still, the Elis’ top-eight finish came as the result of two wins: a one-and-a-quarter-length victory over a crew from St. Hild and St. Bede College, Durham, on June 29 and a half-length verdict against Florida Tech on June 30.

    The loss ended the Bulldogs’ run on the River Thames, a course on which they have seen success in the past. Yale was the first non-British school to win the Temple Challenge Cup, claiming victory in 1996 and, most recently, in 2000.

    Max de La Bruyère contributed reporting.

  8. HEAVYWEIGHT CREW | Heavyweights Dethlefs ’12 and Johnson ’11 shine in Europe

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    There was little time away from the oars for some members of the heavyweight crew team over the summer, as they notched up several successful results at both the national and international level.

    Three Yale rowers competed at last month’s Under-23 World Rowing Championships — including incoming captain Tom Dethlefs ’12, who took home gold with the United States men’s eight — while last year’s captain, Derek Johnson ’11, earned a spot in the U.S. team bound for the Aug. 28-Sept. 4 World Rowing Championships, and races in the final of his event today.

    “Racing at U23s is a good way for guys to train and work on their rowing over the summer,” Dethlefs said, adding that the number of team members who participated at this level did not necessarily correlate with success in college racing.

    Still, Johnson and Dethlefs, the latter of who promised to continue “setting an example” for the team when he assumed the captaincy of the Bulldogs in June, have certainly garnered significant results beyond Yale’s rowing program.

    Dethlefs, who claimed a silver medal with U.S. the men’s eight at the Under-23 World Rowing Championships last year, did one better in the six seat of the same boat at this year’s competition in Amsterdam. The men’s eight zipped through the July 24 final in a time of 5.24.31, setting a new Under-23 world record over the 2,000-meter course on its way to claiming the title.

    Meanwhile, Johnson, rowing with the Oklahoma City National High Performance Center, clinched victory in the men’s pair with coxswain event at the U.S. Senior Rowing Championships Trials. At the Aug. 4 race, his crew posted a winning time of 7.14.15 over 2,000 meters on Mercer Lake in West Windsor, N.J.

    That result qualified him for a spot in the U.S. team, which began competition in Bled, Slovenia, on Sunday.

    Racing in the European waters yesterday, his crew stormed into third place, advancing through to today’s final.

    “We made it to the final,” said Blaise Didler, one of Johnson’s boat mates, in an statement. “The final is going to be a barn burner.”

    The senior world championships are often seen as a “stepping stone” to the Olympic Games, which take place next year in London, he explained.

    Also eyeing future international competition are the two other Yalies who competed at the Under-23 World Championships, Harry Picone ’13 and Owen Symington ’14. Both of them rowed for Australia in a coxed four boat that consisted entirely of rowers studying abroad at U.S. colleges.

    These performances position the heavyweight crew team well for the upcoming season, Dethlefs said.

    “All the components are in place to carry the momentum from the past season and this summer on into the fall,” he said.

    His team will kick off its season in October with the Head of the Housatonic, an event the first varsity boat claimed victory at last year.

  9. Zeng ’11: athlete, physicist, Rhodes Scholar

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    When Will Zeng ’11 is not sitting in the stroke seat of the lightweight crew team’s first varsity boat, he is developing his skills as a physicist, probing the field of quantum information. His efforts as a student-athlete were rewarded last November, when he was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship that will fund his study of computer science and mathematics at the University of Oxford. The News interviewed him Tuesday, and this is what he had to say.

    Q How do you manage your time between rowing and academics?

    A There’s certainly a discipline that stretches between academics and rowing. At its base both are about how to work, and for me too rowing has pushed the physical limits of my focus. I think most people have a sense that athletics builds this sort of individual discipline.

    Yet, what I think is also crucial to emphasize is that rowing is a team discipline in really one of the purest senses. There are no home runs, there are no individual statistics. There are no play-makers, heck there aren’t even any plays.

    Sometimes institutional education can delude us into thinking that academics is only about an individual path, with rhetoric of each finding his or her interests and each being assessed individually with a GPA, a test score, or what have you. These are important things to recognize, but when you get out of school my sense is that the things that make real contributions come from groups that operate at a level greater than the sum of their parts.

    Q You’re particularly interested in physics and quantum information, I believe. Do you ever see any connection between what you study and your rowing?

    A [laughs] No, not really. I’ve mentioned that rowing had been integral to my understanding of the practice of work – the practice of doing science is ultimately team based – but as far as the content goes there’s not much more to link them up other than some foggy metaphorical strings and worse or better poetry that this isn’t really the place to bring up.

    Q What else do you particularly enjoy, beyond rowing and physics?

    A Of course that usually depends on who I’m talking to, but one thing I have been thinking about recently is the concept of rhythm, which, in full disclosure, may still have something to do with rowing and physics. I’m curious about how rhythms are different from patterns in the sense that a pattern is something static, something already there that is later puzzled out and recognized for what it always was, but rhythm is always dynamic, created and sustained at the same time. I think scientific theories operate more in this rhythmic character, and so that might make rhythm, whose use in analysis has been mostly poetic and linguistic, an interesting concept to try and organize things around.

    Q When did you first begin rowing? And what has kept you at it for so long?

    A I began my first year of high school, and if I had to name one thing that’s kept me at it for so long it would be the guys I’ve rowed with.

    Q What has been the highlight of your Yale rowing career?

    A So far, I’d say winning Eastern Sprints my freshman year after an undefeated season. Our sport is unique in that it still has a separate freshman team, and there’s something special about just having those eight or 10 guys in the small squad of your class that has to work things out to win. This season it’s these same guys whose senior leadership is coming together to push for gold. This cyclical element has great rhythm to it, and its something I’m proud to be a part of.

    Q In your time at Yale, how do you feel the rowing program has changed at Yale?

    A While I’ve been here, the goals have always been the same, and they have always been the most difficult ones. Yale’s lightweight rowing is an elite environment that competes at the top of the best league in the country, and so that means the only success is the highest success: to be first at the championship. Second or third is still biting for us.

    That said, we respect our opponents who have the same goal, and our goal will never be easy. As I’ve mentioned to you before, the tight competition at the top of lightweight rowing is part of what makes it so special. You must be at your best to win.

    In some ways I’m just glad we haven’t messed that up. It’s a testament to Andy and the coaching staff that they’ve been able to maintain this high performance over time. It is also a testament to each rower’s ability to cultivate the team’s competitive edge, as the leadership of each senior class graduates and the underclassmen have to step up to fill the places of the older studs they’d taken confidence from before.

    Q At Oxford next year, how do you think life will change? Will you continue to row?

    A I was just talking with one of Oxford’s assistant coaches who was visiting practice last week, and it was great talking to him about rowing there next year. This year’s victorious Oxford crew had Moritz Hafner, a Harvard lightweight alumnus, in bow [seat], and it’d be fantastic to race with them next year.

    Q What do you hope to do post-Oxford? Would you ever think of going into competitive rowing? Or do you have plans in the more academic sphere of things?

    A Other than national team competition, the Oxford-Cambridge boat race may be one of the closest things to port-collegiate rowing. There are lots of ex-national team guys and top end university athletes who row as graduate students in the competition. It’s too bad the professional rowing scene hasn’t recovered the late 1800’s popularity that, so I’ve been told, became mired in gambling scandals.

    All that said, I hope I’m able to organize my life more longer-term so I’ll be able to row, getting up early to take a single out of a nearby boathouse, even if my job is more along the lines of my academic interests. But the goal of course is that that doesn’t feel like a job either. There’s some real geographic overlap between the physics and rowing cultural centers that I’m looking to take advantage of.

  10. LIGHTWEIGHT CREW | One win, one loss in doubleheader

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    A doubleheader for Yale lightweight crew’s first varsity boat on the Housatonic River on Saturday saw mixed performances.

    While the Bulldogs led Cornell and Delaware from start to finish to win by 4.1 seconds Saturday morning, the same boat fell by 2.7 seconds to Dartmouth in the race for the Durand Cup later in the afternoon.

    The second varsity boat also saw a split result — though the other way around, losing to Cornell and Delaware but beating out Dartmouth by over five seconds. The third varsity and freshman boats remained undefeated throughout the day.

    “This was a big weekend for the team, a big test for all the crews,” said head coach Andy Card. “I am glad we went through it.”

    Captain Andrew Hakanson ’11 echoed Card’s sentiment, commending the race Dartmouth rowed and saying that the race would help with the crew’s development.

    In the first race, the rainy conditions and mild headwind were worse than the conditions crews will likely face when the championship season kicks off with the May 15 Eastern Sprints, Card said.

    “It’s akin to playing the AFC championship game in snow in Foxborough [in Massachusetts] when you know the Super Bowl is played in nice conditions in the Superdome [in New Orleans, La.],” he said.

    Meanwhile, the Dartmouth’s strong performance provided a useful trial for the first varsity crew, he said, adding that he had “absolutely no regrets” about the result.

    In last year’s race for the Durand Cup, Dartmouth and Yale’s first varsity boats finished in a dead heat, a rare-occurrence that Card said he could not recall happening on any other occasion.

    With the doubleheader completed, the team has just one more regular season race before the Eastern Sprints — a regatta against Harvard and Princeton for the Goldthwait Cup in Cambridge, Mass., on April 30.

    “It’s a really tight league this year, and this weekend is always a big one for us,” said Will Zeng ’11, who sits in the stroke seat of the varsity boat. “We’ll be bringing our best speed to bear.”

    Though next weekend’s race promises to be filled with “high levels of intensity,” Hakanson said the speed of other crews is out of Yale’s hands and the Bulldogs will do well if they remain focused on constantly finding speed.

    It is difficult to predict how Yale’s boats stack up against those from Harvard and Princeton, Card added.

    “With the turbulent weather this spring, no one really knows where they stand,” he said. “They really only know that they have to get faster — it’s the same with us.”

    Yale came in third at last year’s Harvard-Yale-Princeton Regatta on Lake Carnegie in Princeton, N.J., finishing behind the winning Crimson by a margin of just under 12 seconds.

    Looking beyond next weekend’s regatta, Zeng said the competitive ethic of the lightweight rowers would play an important role in spurring further improvement.

    “There are three weeks before the Sprints, so for engaged and determined athletes, there is plenty of time to get faster,” Card said.

    Racing will take place on the Charles River this Saturday.

  11. HEAVYWEIGHT CREW | Poor showing at Princeton

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    A week after beating Columbia and Penn by open water, Yale heavyweight crew’s varsity boat found itself in the opposite position, falling to Princeton and Cornell by 11 seconds on Lake Carnegie Saturday morning.

    “Our boats didn’t show up on race day — simple as that,” said captain Derek Johnson ’11.

    The rainy Saturday not only saw the Bulldogs give up the Carnegie Cup to the Tigers, but also included losses by the second varsity and freshman boats. They both let Princeton break away and win by five and 14 seconds, respectively. The Elis’ third varsity boat was the only one able to salvage a positive result, finishing ahead of Cornell by three seconds and Princeton by seven.

    “It was extremely disappointing — it was a perfect opportunity to race, and race at a high level,” said head coach Steve Gladstone. “The course was perfect, it appeared that the preparation was perfect, but for reasons I literally find perplexing, we didn’t show up.”

    While Yale’s first varsity boat led the race at the 750 meter mark of the 2,000 meter race, Gladstone said Princeton surged ahead and Cornell followed, leaving the Bulldogs trailing behind as they all closed on the finish.

    In spite of the first varsity crew’s solid rhythm out on the water, the boat never hit maximum pace, varsity oarsman Tom Dethlefs ’12 explained.

    “Princeton and Cornell are fast crews, and when they pushed, we didn’t have the cohesive drive we needed to stick with them,” he said.

    Following the result, Gladstone said he could not have been more disappointed in “our performance,” stressing that he included himself in his assessment.

    Still, he said that the race may not have reflected where Yale’s team sits in the broader standings, less than a month out of championship season, which begins with the May 15 Eastern Sprints.

    “By all comparative results, it would’ve appeared that Yale would’ve been right in the mix,” he said. “[But] it would appear that we choked.”

    The challenge that Yale boats face in the three week break before the Eastern Sprints, he said, is to learn how to race when “all the cards are on the table,” adding that the issue was more psychological than physiological or technical.

    Although Gladstone said he did not think there were “any cards to play in terms of movement of personnel,” there could be changes as part of his constant re-evaluation of team development.

    Johnson said he was confident the team could bounce back after the weekend’s result, explaining that this week, rowers would “go back to the drawing board” and break into smaller boats. The goal of the next three weeks’ training is to maximize speed, he added.

    “Eastern Sprints is three weeks and 20-something practices away,” Dethlefs said. “Our aim is to turn this loss into that extra gear which will let us contend for a championship title.”

    The Eastern Sprints will take place in Worcester, Mass., on May 15. Yale’s first varsity boat finished 11th in last year’s race.