In its first race of the spring, the No. 12 Boston University men’s crew team upset No. 5 Brown University in both the varsity eight and freshman eight races to win the Vic Michaelson Cup on Saturday.
This is the fourth time since 1980 that the Terriers have taken home the Michaelson Cup, and the second time they have won it in the last three years.
On a windy day on the Charles River, BU finished in 6:35.6 and Brown posted a final time of 6:42.4 in the first varsity race of the competition.
Brown took an early lead in that race, but BU overcame it by the halfway point thanks to strong work by junior Bobby McGee and sophomore Todd Sukolsky.
In the first freshman race, Tennyson Hunt and Moritz Frantz earned a decisive victory for BU, beating Brown’s freshmen by a margin of 6:49.0-7:12.0. That was the largest victory the Terriers have ever won over Brown in the history of the matchup.
Brown pulled out a victory in the second freshman eight race, beating the Terriers by a margin of 7.00.0 to 7.01.2.
The Bears took an early lead in that race that they would hold all the way to the finish line in their only victory of the morning.
Saturday’s race was the first time the Terriers had ever captured both the varsity eight and freshman eight races against the Bears.
The Terriers’ last Michaelson Cup victory over the Bears came in 2009, coach Thomas Bohrer’s first season with the program. In that race, BU won by a 3.1-second margin for its second Cup win since 1987.
BU had not raced since the conclusion of the fall season on Nov. 20, when its top boats finished second in the freshman eight and fourth in the varsity four races against schools including Brown, Syracuse University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston College.
BU will have little time to rest and celebrate its victory, as its next opponent is Northeastern University, whom it will face in the Arlett Cup at 9:45 a.m. on Saturday. After that, they have two road races, first at Rutgers University on April 16 and then at Syracuse on April 23.
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Check your facts. BU lost by 1.2 seconds in the Second Varsity race, not Second Freshmen. BU’s second freshman raced against BU and Brown’s First Freshmen, finishing a respectable third. Brown did not field a 2F boat. Also, mentioning the coxswains for doing strong work along with their strokes is overstating things a bit, but coxies need to get mentioned every now and then. Otherwise, they are to be heard and not seen. ;^)