By Andy MacDougall, News Staff
For many collegiate crews, the world’s largest regatta also serves as the inaugural event of the rowing season. In its first competition of the 2013-2014 rowing campaign, Northeastern rowers had a successful return to the water in the 49th rendition of the Head of the Charles Regatta.
Northeastern’s efforts on the Charles were highlighted by the performance of the Men’s Championship Eight crew Sunday afternoon. Headlined by Row2K’s Collegiate Athlete of the Year in senior Justin Jones, Northeastern’s shell crossed the finish line with a time of 14:49.876, just eight seconds off the pace set by the event’s winners, OTC Amsterdam.
More impressively, Northeastern’s final time placed them as the second-fastest collegiate crew in the field. Harvard’s varsity eight earned a top-5 finish with a time of 14:43.027, placing them third overall. The Huskies finished sixth overall, ahead of perennial collegiate rowing powers in Brown University (7th overall, 14:50.493), the University of California at Berkeley (8th overall, 14:55.469) and the defending 2012 champions in the University of Washington (9th overall, 14:55.482).
Crews from USRowing, French Rowing and Pôle France Aviron Nancy joined Harvard and OTC Amsterdam in the top five.
“We have a great captain, morale appears to be very high, and we have good depth in our senior class – something we haven’t had in a long time,” Northeastern coach John Pojednic said via the Head of the Charles Regatta website.
“I think the expectations are certainly heightened by all of this, but we are going to have to work very hard to equal or better our results from last year.”
This was the second-consecutive sixth-place finish for Northeastern. On an equally beautiful day last fall, the Huskies completed the course with a time of 14:53.212, nearly 16 seconds off the pace set by the University of Washington.
“We’ve proven to ourselves that we are a program that can step up and put pressure on the teams that have been the pacesetters for the past 4-5 years,” Pojednic said. “This is inspiring and certainly gives us great motivation to come to work each day.”
In the Women’s Championship Eight, Northeastern finished 19th overall and 16th among college crews. The women finished with a time of 17:41.510, placing them behind Harvard-Radcliffe (seventh), but ahead of other area rivals such as BU (22nd), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (27th) and Boston College (29th).
Alumni crews of the university also found success during the three-day regatta with impressive showings in the Men’s Alumni Eights (third of 42 crews), Women’s Alumni Eights (11th of 36) and the Men’s Senior Master Eights (17th of 45).
