Despite the festive and spirited atmosphere that makes the annual Head of the Charles Regatta a staple of the fall for competitors and spectators alike, the women's crew left the Charles River with a bittersweet experience yesterday.
While the regatta always serves as a crowning experience for rowers, especially for graduating seniors, this season's 19th-place finish out of 34 for the Tufts varsity eight boat in the Collegiate Women's Eights was a tough outcome for the Jumbos. Clocking in at a time of 18:39.993, the boat finished almost 90 seconds behind the winning crew from Williams. Indeed, the NESCAC was well-represented in the top four, as runner-up Bates was followed by Trinity and the Williams JV boat. Meanwhile, Tufts' JV boat notched a time of 19:23.075 to place 28th in the race.
"We both slipped back a lot," senior co-captain Steph St. Thomas said. "That's the hardest part about head racing because we got off the water and it felt like it went well, but you don't know for sure how other people around you finished. You don't find out the results, so that makes it really frustrating too. It's also one of those things where we could have improved from last weekend or last year, but a bunch of other teams improved as well, so it's still really tough."
Tufts finished within seven seconds of 16th-place Wesleyan and could have improved on its time had there not been an incident with Bates' JV crew, which started ahead of the Jumbos. About mid-way through the race at a turn under Weeks Footbridge, the Bates boat failed to turn properly when its bow approached the Jumbos' stern.
"We passed them at the start," freshman varsity coxswain Gillian Hodes said. "We were the faster boat so we had the right of way, and Williams [was ahead of us] so we had to yield to them, but the Bates boat just didn't get the Weeks turn fast enough.
"We had already completed our turn, and we were cutting in to get in front of them to get our faster lane back," she continued. "[But] they hadn't turned yet, so they were going straight at us, so we had to take the outside arch. It took us out of our course; you want the fastest lane, which, going into there, is a bit of an S-turn, so it's basically trying to hit straight down the course."
"Whenever you have to change your course at all, it definitely adds seconds, so that's the thing about the Head of the Charles -- it's all about steering and about avoiding other boats," St. Thomas said.
Still, while finishing just shy of their goal in what was essentially a home race at the Head of the Charles, the greater regatta experience was not lost upon the Jumbos after they left the water.
"There was a lot of aggressive racing out there -- it felt really fast," Hodes said. "I watched them in the boat; I could see their faces the whole time and everyone was working really hard. I think everyone is really happy with what we did out here today."
"Our motto for the season is 'No regrets,' and I feel like absolutely right now we have no regrets," St. Thomas said. "We've left everything on the water and we've raced the best race we could, and that's the best you can hope for. We passed [the] Bates [JV boat], and that was our goal."
The JV boat also passed a boat that started ahead of it at the regatta, which proved a highlight for that part of the crew.
"When we were in the starting area, it was so cold and windy and we were freezing, but once we got started, everything came together," senior co-captain Kaitlyn Mula said of the JV boat. "We had a lot of power; we had moved up on the Maryland boat that was in front of us, and we ended up passing Maryland just before Eliot Bridge [toward the end of the race], which was awesome."
This year's race also saw all of the Jumbo seniors on the roster take the water in either the varsity or the JV boat, the result of a conscious decision to reward those upperclassmen who have remained on the crew for several seasons.
"I think it's important for [the seniors], and I think for the underclassmen who didn't get a chance to row, it gives them one more reason to work hard over the winter," coach Gary Caldwell said.
"I feel like we're passing the torch in some ways because we had a couple of freshmen in our boat and it was their first [Head of the Charles]; it was a great one for them to start out on and a great one for us [seniors] to leave," St. Thomas said.
While the Jumbos started to tire midway through Oct. 12's Quinsigamond Snake regatta, yesterday's longer run on the Charles River saw a marked improvement for the varsity eight.
"It was much stronger in the middle of the race; we knew our problem spots going into it and we absolutely overcame them, so we feel good about it," St. Thomas said. "I guess we're a little sluggish sometimes, but this time it was not sluggish at all. [Head of the Charles is] longer than a 5k, and last week our race was a 4k, so it was longer, which could have been really hard but it felt fine."
For the JV boat, one of the brighter moments came from junior coxswain Ana Chiu, who joined the crew last spring and was a rookie navigating the Charles.
"The most difficult thing if you ask me is keeping everyone focused because there are so many distractions everywhere and she just kept us in the boat, mentally and physically together," Mula said.
"Ana is a fairly new coxswain; she only joined us last spring, so she hasn't had a whole lot of experience," senior Kate Siegel said. "She's never had experience with a regatta as complicated, as hectic as this one. And she stayed really calm, she kept her head about her and she kept us really focused." Racing on Saturday during the weekend-long regatta, the crew fielded an all-freshman boat in the Collegiate Women's Fours, which finished second-to-last out of a field of 34 in 22:28.557. An incident under Anderson Bridge involving Tufts and several other boats packed close together brought about a crash, forcing the Jumbos to stop.
"It was especially frustrating for them because it was their first Head of the Charles, as an all-freshman boat," St. Thomas said. "It's just not the way you want to start your experience here. I think they were really hard on themselves, but no one else was hard on them ... It happens."
With the Head of the Charles having come and gone, the crew looks ahead to its final race of the fall at the Head of the Fish in New York, where Tufts looks to end the fall season on a high note before entering winter offseason training. And the Jumbos are looking to turn their lower-than-expected finish on the Charles yesterday into a motivational tool during this week.
"It's lighting a little fire under us right now because we had two slightly disappointing weeks," St. Thomas said. "We'll see some of the really competitive schools that we don't normally see until the end of our spring season. We want to go there and represent Tufts well and show those schools how strong we are."
