By Olivia Rayburn, news correspondent
Hundreds of thousands of spectators and athletes lined the Charles River this weekend, eager to watch the spectacle of the Head of the Charles Regatta. The regatta, which took place between Oct. 20 and 21, featured teams from around the world, including Northeastern’s men’s and women’s rowing.
Sara Corey, a second-year Northeastern coxswain, told The News in an email that the Head of the Charles “is really impossible to compare this race to other head races. There is so much history, tradition and hype around this race that is unmatched by any other.”
Starting off strong on Saturday, Northeastern’s Men’s Club Four, the less competitive collegiate race, placed second in their event just five seconds behind Dartmouth’s Four. This is a significant jump from Northeastern’s seventh place finish in the same event last year.
The Women’s Club Eight A boat placed sixth in their event on Saturday, barely 1.5 seconds behind the fifth place finish. Northeastern placed the same in this event last year. This year, a second entry in the event was added. The B boat didn’t fare quite as well, placing 21st of 31 entries.
The weather took a turn for the worse going into the second day of the regatta. Rowers and coxswains alike had to battle sudden gusts of wind.
“The strong headwind combined with head current made for a really slow race,” men’s team coxswain Matt Perez said in an email.
Despite these difficulties, the team was well prepared in part due to their coaches who “do a great job of training us to be prepared for any kind of weather,” Corey said.
The men’s team had three entries in the highly competitive Men’s Championship Eight category. The A, B and C boats placed 10th at 15:17.464, 13th at 15:23.602 and 25th at 16:10.400, respectively.
“We set the goal of finishing eighth [of the collegiate teams] and identified a handful of First Varsity crews we wanted to beat,” Perez, the coxswain of the B boat, said. “In the end we met that goal exactly, finishing eighth college, beating multiple First Varsity boats along the way.”
The women’s team’s entry in the Women’s Championship Eight placed 14th at 17:54.608 compared to a 22nd-place finish last year.
“I can’t begin to say how proud I am of my crew and my coxswain,” Rose Flanagan, the stroke seat of the Championship Eight, told The News in an email. “As a team we’re really proud of our results from this weekend, but moving forward, we have a higher standard and expect nothing but improvement from this performance.”
The next time the teams will compete is at the much smaller Foot of the Charles on Saturday, November 10.
Going forward, Corey thinks the team is “on the right track and that we can have an amazing year. Again, we just have to trust each other, our coaches and the process, and we will meet our end goals. It was certainly a good weekend to be a Howlin’ Husky!”
