The Yale heavyweight 1V blew down the 2000m Lake Quinsigamond course in 5:23.6 to capture an emphatic win at the Men’s Sprints, a performance befitting Yale coach Steve Gladstone’s final trip to Worcester as a rowing coach. It was Yale’s sixth-straight title at the Sprints.
Not far behind, the Princeton Lightweight V8 took the win in 5:35.4, ending a title drought in the event for the Tigers dating back to 2010.
HEAVYWEIGHTS
After posting a blistering 5:29 in their opening heat, the Yale Varsity showed no signs of settling in the Grand, cranking their race to the maximum to win, four seats ahead of Princeton and six seats ahead of a fast-closing Syracuse crew.
“Since the beginning of the season we’ve been we’ve just been talking about sticking together,” said bow seat Liam Galloway. “Princeton, congrats to them, they’re a hell of a crew. We knew through the middle of the race that all we had to do is stick together. They took a move, we dug our heels in deep and went back with them. It’s been a terrific season so far, and we’re looking forward to keeping it going.”
A final sprints podium for Steve Gladstone
Galloway acknowledged that at least part of the race was for their coach.
“Since since he arrived at Yale, he’s just been preaching hard work and good work ethics to everyone. Hard work pays off. You can have fun off the water, but most important is every stroke that you’re on the water, you have to make it count. We were all we were all gunning to prove to everyone why why Steve’s the best and give him all of our support.”
For his part, Gladstone was sticking to the moment. “This crew is very racy. I don’t recall having a crew that’s had the ability to sprint like this group. Of course, some of the early crews didn’t need to, but they are just racy guys. They they were committed to each other very, very early on, as I told them prior to this race a week ago, I told them I’ve never worked with a group that’s been more committed throughout the year to bring the speed to the racecourse. And so it’s just wonderful.”
And as far as the end of his career goes, Gladstone was equally unsentimental. Asked whether a result like this would make it easier or harder to step away, Gladstone responded simply, “I don’t think in those terms.”
Almost lost in Yale’s accomplishment were the silver and bronze medal finishers from Princeton and Syracuse. For Princeton, their silver medal was the first 1V podium finish at the Sprints since 2017, and Princeton head coach Greg Hughes reflected on the changes his team had made to get back into the medals.
Princeton’s 1V was 2nd
“If you look at our season last year, it was a tough year,” said Hughes. “Guys stepped up in a pretty impressive way to make some big changes that were hard to make. It’s cool to get to be a part of that for me. That was not the coaching, that was the athletes and so I’m proud of them.”
Syracuse ended an even longer medal drought than Princeton, reaching the podium in the Men’s Varsity for the first time since 1978. Like Hughes, Syracuse coach Dave Reischman paid tribute to his athletes for the result.
“I think it’s just the focus on the daily; just don’t look too far ahead,” said Reischman. “I used to call it the ESPN generation: everybody wants to set goals, and they all want to be number one. The great separator is who wants to do work.”
Syracuse captured their first 1V medal since 1978
“I think we have a group of guys, there’s a lot of seniors in that boat, they have been together over four years and have committed to just the process we have at Syracuse, buying into the team culture, buying into just taking it day by day and getting a little bit better.”
“We don’t have a lot of high profile recruits. We recruit kids that maybe they’re not grand finalists or medalist coming out of high school, but we challenge them to be the hardest working crew in the country and we challenge ourselves as coaches to be the best development coaches in the country from freshman year to senior year.”
Harvard won the 2V
While Yale also won the Rowe Cup for overall heavyweight team points, it wasn’t a clean sweep by any means. Yale captured the 1V and the 3V, while Harvard captured the 2V and the 4V, and Dartmouth the 5V.
“There are five freshman in there,” said Harvard assistant coach Pat LaPage of the Crimson 2V. “They’ve worked really hard through the year, and because of the Freshmen there is a lot of enthusiasm in the group! We lost to Brown in the dual, and so we were able to make some adjustments, and what we worked on worked.”
LIGHTWEIGHTS
After a few years of knocking on the door, the Princeton lightweights finally broke through, winning both the 1V and 2V races and capturing the Jope Cup for the first time since 2010.
The Princeton Lightweight ruled the lake
“Going off HYP, we knew Harvard was going to be really quick, as well as Yale,” said Princeton coxswain Adam Casler. “We knew we had two weeks, and we knew they were pissed because they had crabbed at HYPs and thought they could have won that race. The biggest thing we had was that we had Senior team captain Will Olson back in our boat, that made a huge difference with the speed and the leadership. He came back into the boat and made a huge change physically and mentally with the guys.”
Princeton coach Marty Crotty also felt that the crew had developed well from the win at HYPs, and was willing to learn from the win. “We actually looked at the tape and the boat was moving really well, good lively run,” said Crotty. “We were understroking both Yale and Harvard, we knew that we’d have a shot if we could just be a little more consistent. The last couple of weeks, we mostly worked on cleaning everything up.”
Princeton Lightweight 1V
For Crotty, the 2V was as critical to the team’s success as the 1V. “The 2V is your swing boat, how the 2V goes is how your team goes. Everybody wants to say it’s a trickledown from the 1V, but I would argue with that. It’s the 2V that 3V guys are trying to get into and they’re fighting like dogs every day to try to beat the 2V, and the 1V is propped up by that.”
“We went up to Cornell as are in April, and the 1V got whooped by three seconds, Cornell took it to us. Because the order of racing, the last race of the day was 2V and we faced a five hour drive back to Princeton, after we would have gotten swept. So, the 2V was down four seats in that race, but they came back and won, and I want to say that saved the season for us. It’s just finding things like that, they’ve been a backstop for us all year.”
While Princeton went into the regatta seeded first, the field behind them was blown apart in the morning heats, with 5th-seeded Harvard and 7th-seeded Navy both racing to surprising podium spots behind the Tigers.
“It was a complete change in everything we were doing,” said Harvard coach Bill Boyce of his team’s transformation this year. “It was a willingness to recognize that what we were doing wasn’t working, and to do things differently. It led by our captain Greg Cain, I really credit him for this.”
The Harvard Lightweight 1V
Yale won the lightweight 3V ahead of Cornell and Navy, while Cornell won the 4V and the Navy 5V Lightweights won the combined Light/Heavy 5V/6V event.
NOTES FROM THE COURSE
Sure, it was windy in Worcester, but when is it not? In any event, the wind that funneled down Lake Quinsigamond yesterday for the Men’s Sprints and Women’s Ivy championship made the track one of the fastest in history, with course records set in all 10 men’s events. (Check this wikipedia entry for the full rundown)
ECAC Rowing Commissioner Gary Caldwell, arguably without hyperbole, called it “the best day of collegiate racing ever,” and it had to have been at least one of the best, and for sure one of the fastest.
Princeton coach Greg Hughes concurred: “It’s a testament to where men’s rowing is going, and it’s exciting. And the parity that you see, we need it in men’s rowing. You look at what happened at the PAC 12, you see Washington and Stanford with a deck between them. That’s huge for our sport, and I’m excited to see where this all goes just in three weeks.”
Cox tosses were back on Quinsigamond