It’s never easy to compete against the top team in your region, but it’s even more difficult when that team was ranked No. 2 in the nation last year and has several returning seniors, some of whom rowed on Olympic teams last summer.
That team is Brown University men’s crew, last year’s Eastern Sprints champs, and one of two favorites to win the national title this year, and despite a valiant effort, the Boston University men’s crew team fell in every match-up with the Bears this weekend.
The Terriers lost their second cup of the season to the top-ranked team from Rhode Island. Last week, the men lost the Conlan Cup to Syracuse University; on Saturday, the Bears secured the Michaelson Cup, named after their first full-time coach, with a time of five minutes, 46.27 seconds, nearly 20 seconds faster than the BU varsity eight’s 6:05.34.
BU coach Rodney Pratt said while his men improved in their second race of the season, the Brown crew was “like a buzz saw, basically. They just have some incredibly talented rowers and a great depth to their team.”
“No one’s gonna deny that Brown’s going to win, because they’re the better crew — they have guys who were in the Olympics rowing for them,” said Mitch Johnson, stroke of the varsity eight. “But we go in there thinking that if we can shave seconds off, if we can get closer than they were expecting us to and challenge them a little, then it’s a win for us.”
Pratt stressed the importance of looking at each race “not just for rankings, but as practice for Sprints, which is what we work toward all spring.”
The varsity eight lineup was Johnson, Chris Perry, Andre Reid, Kevin Valent, Sean Casavechia, Dan Greenberg, Andrew Henry, John Grogan and captain Jarrod Campbell.
The second varsity men raced two boats from Brown and failed to beat either of them to the finish line. The Brown second varsity posted a 5:57.0, their third varsity followed with a time of 6:12 and BU trailed behind with a 6:20.17.
Even with the loss, four seat Sean Corcoran said the race was an improvement over last week’s loss to Syracuse.
“It definitely felt better,” Corcoran said.
The second varsity included Corcoran, Ben Boyd, Matt Dukowski, Trudo Letschert, Andrew Tropp, Fran Racioppi, Luke Huisenga, Dan Ford and Hideki Kaku.
Brown also proved to be too much for the BU freshman team. The freshman eight’s time of 6:16.93 was no match for the Bears’ sub six-minute finish, and the Terriers lost by almost the same 20-second margin.
The freshman eight was coxed by Priya George and rowed by Jordan Thurlow, Tom Roseberry, James Allgood, Jaxon Rudduck, John Leinicke, Mike Siedband, Mark Baeder and G.W. Jones.
The second freshman four raced two fours from Brown and couldn’t compete with either crew. BU completed the course in 7:44.20, almost one minute behind Brown’s times of 6:46.53 and 6:47.53.
The four consisted of Liana Shelby, Mike Bernheisel, Tom Shochat, Brett Demshar and Shahe Wartarian.
The men face local rival Northeastern University next week and will be defending the Arlett Cup, which the BU varsity eight took home last year.
“Northeastern is the big one. That’s what we’re training for. It’s the whole cross-town rivalry thing for bragging rights to the river,” Johnson said.
“Everyone knows we get a little more psyched about it, especially since we won last year, and we want to keep the cup in our boathouse,” Campbell said. “It’s definitely going to be fun, because Northeastern seems to bring out the best in us.”
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