It had been a long time since the men's crew team could claim a victory in a fall race.
The Jumbos' wait ended this past Sunday at the Lake Quinsigamond Snake Regatta in Worcester, Mass. The varsity four-man boat, made up of co-captains senior Matt Diffey and junior Nahvid Etedali, junior Robbie Bayless and sophomore Brendan Coggan, defeated a field of eleven other boats, finishing the course in 16:22.
"I think this course was really in our favor, because it was a little shorter than the typical races that we race in during the fall," Bayless said of the 4,000-meter regatta. "We were really rowing together and [the boat] had a great run. This wasn't the biggest regatta with the best teams around, but it was a really positive step to get a win."
Etedali also seemed pleased with the performance of his boat, which managed to defeat WPI, a crew they had lost to earlier in the season.
"There are some pieces where you can just feel the boat moving, where everyone is applying pressure together," he said. "We were at 28 [strokes per minute] for most of the race, and a few times we bumped it up to 30 or 31, but it didn't feel as fast. I think we may have found the stroke rate that fits us."
"I think that the thousand meters right after the Route 9 Bridge [roughly in the middle of the course] might have been the best thousand that we've rowed at race pace all year," Bayless added.
Freshman coxswain Josh Aschheim, now the only remaining novice coxswain of the three that began the season, has been a pleasant surprise thus far for the Jumbos.
"Josh did a great job again," Etedali said. "He definitely pushed us to our limit, kept us updated on boats in front of us, and generally did everything that a coxswain is supposed to do."
The four's success was especially impressive considering that Bayless and Etedali each "caught a crab" - plunged the blade of the oar into the water at the wrong angle - in the last 600 meters of the race.
The varsity eight also performed well on Sunday, placing seventh out of 20 crews.
"We rowed a pretty good race," junior David Orellano said. "We didn't really know what to expect, but we rowed like we wanted to until the end, when the wind really started to affect us."
Members of both boats complained about the unusually strong headwind on Sunday. Both crews were forced to row at a lower-than-optimal stroke rate so that they could keep their strokes under control. Adjusting to a headwind is often one of the most difficult adjustments that a crew is forced to make, though the Jumbos handled it well.
The team has no plans to bask in the glory of its first win of the season, with the Head of Charles, rowing's most esteemed race, to take place this weekend. The Jumbos will face their stiffest competition of the season, far greater than that at Lake Quinsigamond this past Sunday.
"I think the plan this week will be to go out hard on Tuesday and Wednesday, and then after that just work on technique on the water, which has helped us so far this season," Etedali said.
This win has to be considered a huge morale boost considering what this embattled program has been through in the past few months. Last year, the Jumbos had a co-captain and two experienced coxswains leave the team, and struggled during the fall in the face of high expectations. This year's team, with far lower expectations than last year's, has already brought hope back to the program, despite the team's slow start.
"We haven't been consistently winning," Bayless said. "It was good to be able to go into a field of 11, even if it wasn't the strongest field, and win the event."
