By Jessica Geller, deputy sports editor

“Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream” is not just a nursery rhyme, but a varsity sport. Women’s rowing started the 2014-2015 season on Saturday in Connecticut at the Head of the Housatonic Regatta with a fourth place finish.

The Huskies entered three boats in the 8+ Collegiate Women event. The varsity eight boat finished fourth with a time of 14:41, behind Brown, Yale and Radcliffe, the Harvard rowing team.

“It’s a really great achievement considering our time and considering the boats we were up against,” senior Co-Captain Chloe Laverack said. “In my four years [at Northeastern] we have been battling Harvard, who is our home rival. These are Ivy League schools with wonderful and fortunate funding and really developed programs, to be able to come so close to that is really exciting.”

Northeastern’s second boat crossed the line at 15:36 for 15th place and the third husky boat placed 19th with a time of 15:55. Thirty boats entered the race.

Northeastern’s fastest boat had six returning Huskies, including Laverack and two freshmen, Madison Mailey and Michelle Esposito. Mailey and Esposito, from Canada and the US respectively, were both part of their country’s junior development teams in high school.

Head Coach Joe Wilhelm said that it is unusual to put freshmen in the varsity boat, especially for the first race, but that the two are some of the best from their respective countries.

A sound rowing team is on beat when all eight women in the boat hit the water simultaneously. As with any new teammates, there is a learning curve.

“All the freshmen have been working extremely hard to develop the stroke of Northeastern,” Laverack said. “In some ways, you are almost at a disadvantage coming in to the university because you have to unlearn and relearn your stroke.”

Laverack also spoke about her role as a team captain.

“It hits home because I was a walk on coming to the NU rowing team,” she said. “I had never rowed before coming to this university. These four years of being on the team have defined who I am. To be able to be voted by my peers as someone who they look up [to] and someone who they are confident in to lead the team is extremely overwhelming.”

“First race of the year we had some basic things that we wanted to try and accomplish and test our conditioning, test our speed,” Wilhelm said. “We were pretty happy with the results.”

There was no set race plan for the Housatonic, but that will change as the 39-member team prepares for the biggest event of year, the Head of the Charles Regatta, on Oct. 17-18.

“We’ll change the lineups each day this week and see if we can’t tweak something to make it a little bit faster,” Wilhelm said. “We’ll add a little more of a race plan.”

Last season, the Huskies reached the NCAA Championship Regatta for the first time as a team. Laverack notices that her teammates trained hard over the summer break and did not slack off.

“It almost seems like where we left off in the spring is where we are picking back up in the fall,” Laverack said. “You know immediately that you are going to do better next year because you don’t have to work back that deficit.”

Photo courtesy Asha Michener, Northeastern Athletics