For the first time in almost 20 years, the first varsity boat of the men's crew team opened up the season with three back-to-back wins. Captain Kyle Flood, the team's only senior, said the performance over the weekend is Tufts' strongest early-season showing of his four-year career. The strong team results came with University President Anthony Monaco in attendance, witnessing his first regatta.
"It was a good start to the season compared to all the years I have been at Tufts," Flood said. "That's good because we will be facing even tougher crews next weekend.
The first and second varsity eights raced Tulane on Saturday and were joined by a novice four for Sunday's races against Hamilton and Wentworth.
Coach Jay Britt attributed part of the boats' success to consistently executing the race plan in the face of tough competitors. Hamilton and Wentworth have had consistently strong crews, and Tufts and Tulane have traded wins over the years, but this year Tufts moved from finishing 14 seconds behind the Green Wave last year to finishing almost 30 seconds ahead of them.
The closest and most demanding race of the weekend for the first varsity was their last race on Sunday, when they faced off against a strong Wentworth crew that held the pressure on Tufts the entire race.
The two crews remained bow to stern for the final 700 meters of the race, which tested the composure of the young team. Flood, who sits in the stroke seat and sets the pace of the boat, kept calm even as the Wentworth bow ball moved up on the Jumbos.
"There were moments when they started moving up on us," Flood said. "But the huge thing was that we didn't panic."
Tufts held off Wentworth through the middle part of the race and started the sprint a bit earlier than expected to pull away in the last couple hundred meters of the race. According to Flood, the team hit the power hard and brought the rate up a couple beats for a solid and controlled sprint.
"At the sprint we were bow to stern," he said. "[Our coxswain] called the sprint early and we walked away. The pressure and the run really came through."
On Saturday, Tulane got off to a quick start, but the Jumbos varsity eight made an early move and moved up quickly on the Green Wave early on in the race. They built up their lead from the 500-meter mark to put some distance between the crews and completed the course in 7:03.95 despite a strong headwind that kicked in during the last thousand meters of the race.
In addition to a sweep from the first boat, the second varsity boat (2V) beat Tulane and Wentworth but lost to Hamilton in the last seconds of the race.
On Sunday, the 2V split their races - they lost to Hamilton in their first event of the day by 11 seconds, but came out strong against Wentworth to win by a similar margin.
In their race against Tulane, the 2V began pulling away halfway through the race and solidified their lead in the last 500 meters to win 7:24.12 to 7:37.9.
The novice four came out strong in their only event against the Continentals, but blew a sizeable lead when the team caught a crab, meaning an oar became stuck in the water, with 80 meters to go in the race. The team picked it up quickly lost to Hamilton by two seconds. Britt stressed that the boat dealt with the crab appropriately and will have to focus on solid technique throughout the race to keep any rower from catching a crab.
"It's a bad experience, but one that they can learn from," he said. "At any moment something bad can go wrong, but you have to stay focused and attentive through the end."
Tufts turns now to preparing for its next regatta against Bates, Wesleyan and the University of New Hampshire at the Malden River. All three schools will provide some tough competition for the Jumbos who hope to carry their strong start through to their first big test of the season.
"The competition is going to be a little faster, and I don't see them getting any slower," Britt said. "It's up to us to surprise them a little bit. The hope is to stick to our race plan and put enough pressure on those guys to push them into making a mental error."
