The men and women's varsity crew teams fielded a combined 29 boats at this weekend's Head of the Fish in Saratoga Springs, New York. It was a successful close to the fall headrace season that displayed the depth of the Tufts Crew program, according to women's coach Brian Dawe.
Although none of the boats went home with the Head of the Fish first-place trophy - a literal fish-head stuck to a wooden plaque that is both comical and revolting at the same time - the teams did go home with four second-place medals and several other close finishes.
This is the first time that the men's and women's teams have raced at the same regatta this fall season. According to senior captain Caroline Patterson, the team was able to bond over the course of the regatta.
"It was a great first opportunity we had for all of us to row as a crew," she said. "We felt good about how it went across the board."
The regatta functioned as a more traditional race, with athletes competing in multiple events and types of boats. The women, who have spent the season focusing on sculling, added races in the light eight and joined with the men's team for what Dawe called the highlight of the day: the mixed collegiate eights. Meanwhile, the men rowed in fours for the first time this season.
Senior captain Kyle Flood was impressed with the ability of both the men's and women's rowers to adapt to each other on race day, even as they were switching up lineups.
"It was surprising how both the men's and women's teams came together well," he said. "It speaks volumes about both programs."
Tufts came into the race bent on beating Middlebury, who edged them out of the first place finish last year. However, neither school was expecting the forceful return of Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), who used to sweep the event and powered through again this year to take the top two slots. Tufts A ended up finishing fourth, with Tufts B coming in at sixth, in what was some rowers' fourth race of the day.
The highlight on the men's side came when the defending lightweight four dominated the competition to achieve second place, with a finish time of a mere two seconds behind Williams, one of the top Div. III crew programs. Despite minimal practice time in the four, the two varsity rowers, sophomore Sam Helrich and junior Jeff Thibodeau, along with junior varsity rowers, freshman Jackson Horwitz and sophomore Jeff Aalberg, were able to come together under the leadership of freshman coxswain Maria Karam to dominate the 12-boat field.
The Tufts lightweight program is traditionally very successful due to team members such as Helrich and Thibodeau who row in the first boat but are technically lightweight.
"We have some guys within our program who are competitive within the first varsity boat who happen to be lightweight," associate head coach Anna Lindgren-Streicher said. "When they get the chance to race against other lightweight competition, it's a good match up for them."
The women also saw strong results from their lightweight boats, with the open lightweight double manned by junior Sofi Shield and sophomore Laura Aravena and the lightweight eight both finishing in second.
Shield and Aravena have been rowing together throughout the season and have been able to match up well.
"Their rowing styles are complimentary," Dawe said. "Every once in a while you get two people who work together, which [is] pretty amazing."
Dawe saw significant improvements from the women's last performance against Ithaca and UMass Amherst, who remained some of the top contestants in the sculling races.
The women saw major improvements in the quad races, with the boat stroked by junior captain Caroline Ricard coming in second place in the open event, and the two Tufts quads in the collegiate event taking third and fourth, with the A boat finishing only 20 milliseconds behind the same Ithaca boat that beat them by twenty seconds two weekends ago.
The men's eight was also able to make some improvements from last year and capitalized on the relatively short head-race distance to put into practice the rating work done in the past couple of weeks. The men kept the rating between a 32 and a 34, a marked increase from past races.
Because the men's eight did so poorly last year, the boat was seeded last, which sophomore coxswain Kasia Gawlas saw as an advantage because they were able to pass four boats on their way to a tenth-place finish.
"We generally do really well when we are passing boats, everyone has something they can focus on, there's someone to beat," she said. "We do better during 2k season mentality-wise because it's more of a one-on-one."
According to Flood, the results showed the effort the team put in this season but also provide motivation for winter training.
"For the four and the eight, I think we all pushed ourselves really hard," he said. "Over the season I think we've made a lot of progress, and I think if we keep making progress, we'll actually do really well in the spring."
Both squads are hoping to use the experience at this race to springboard into winter training for the 2,000-meter sprint season.
"We've been working on everything technique-wise, the ratings were higher because it was a significantly shorter race, naturally you have to bring it up to stay competitive," Flood said. "That's helpful going into the spring because those are 2k's."
