IRA Report:
The Yale lightweights sent two crews down to Camden to race in the IRA, and both the varsity eight and the coxless four came through with dramatic sprints in the second thousand to send the program into the summer season with a flourish.
In the coxless four, the all-sophomore crew won their heat to advance directly to the final, but then found themselves in sixth after the start in the Grand Final on Saturday, behind Colgate, UMass, Cornell, Lehigh, and Harvard. A strong push in the second thousand, though, saw the Eli lightweights move through UMass, Lehigh, and their fellow lightweights from Cornell and Harvard. Only Colgate was able to stay in front to the end. Their silver medal is the first for the Yale lightweight program since 1994.
The varsity eight found itself in fifth after the start, the Blue surrounded by red on all sides, with Cornell in Lane 6 and Harvard in Lane 4. After the start, Cornell moved and dropped the Bulldogs to sixth. After a year of struggle to find the right rhythm and power, though, the Blue were not to be bitten in the final race by the same bug. They used the middle thousand to get back through Cornell, and then used that momentum to move on arch-rival Harvard throughout the last 500 meter stretch, with Yale surging and Harvard holding them off. At the line, it was the Elis who were a canvas better.
Since the wind shadow at the IRA meant that Lanes 1, 2, and 3 would have an advantage, the Elis in Lane 5 could only hope to have a good row and have fun trying to pick off anyone around ‘em. After losses to Cornell and Harvard during both the regular season and the Sprints, the Bulldogs were able to turn the tables in the final race, sprinting through the Big Red and the Crimson (the latter from open-water down) to finish fourth overall, up two spots from their IRA seed. For the seniors in the varsity, Gerhardt, Gibson, Rose, Toro, and Vavrichek, it was great to be able to come off the water for the last time feeling good about sticking together and coming through in the face of adversity.
Odds and ends: For the final of the LWT 8+, the IRA Fairness Committee put the heat winners in Lanes 1 & 2, second-place in 3 & 4, and third-place in 5 & 6. Yale was originally drawn for Lane 1….[ed. note: so where was this Fairness Committee in 2001?]…Lane 1 (Navy) won the Gold, Lane 2 (Georgetown) was Silver, and Lane 3 (Princeton) was Bronze…Yale’s sprint through Harvard meant that in each of the last two years, the HYP schools have all each beaten the others at least once in the same season…For full results, click here…two former lightweights are helping the Yale heavyweights turn things around. Patrick Hamm ‘04, stroke of the Head of the Charles eight that finished second, is now the seven seat in the Yale heavy varsity which won the IRA Petites, and Yurij Rudensky ‘07, recruited as a lightweight but now rowing for the 1F heavies, stroked the Yale 1FH to a bronze medal at the IRA…