The Northeastern men’s and women’s crew team competed at the Foot of the Charles Regatta Saturday, coming away with top-three finishes in all categories in which they competed. 

In an exciting end to the fall season, the A boats took a third place finish in both the Men’s and Women’s Championship Eight category. Additionally, the men’s boat came in first place in the Men’s Championship Four category amongst competitors, such as Harvard University, their women’s team Radcliffe, Boston University, Boston College and The University of Rhode Island.

The race served as the counterpart to the Head of the Charles Regatta, or HOCR, which took place just three weeks earlier. 

“We were excited to compete with a smaller group of teams who are more central to Boston like Harvard and BU,” said sophomore coxswain Skylar Shea. “These are teams that we also competed with at the HOCR, so we were interested to see how our training translated from the time since Head of the Charles to now.” 

As such, many teams use this opportunity to implement or experiment with changes to their race preparation for each regatta.

“After HOCR we really wanted to focus on higher rate pieces as well as executing a solid race plan,” said sophomore rower Victoria Budike. “HOCR was our first race of the fall, so we were much more comfortable going into the FOCR with one race under our belt.” 

The course, which usually runs for six kilometers (3.4 miles) was altered this year to begin at MIT and end at Newell Boathouse, which is home to the Harvard rowing team. This meant rowers competed on a significantly shorter course that was approximately 3.7 km (2.3 miles). 

This adjustment to the course led to faster times across the river and especially highlighted the performance of the Huskies, whose men’s championship four finished with a time of 12:35.3, a full three seconds ahead of the Harvard A boat and 17 seconds ahead of the Harvard B boats. In the Women’s Championship Eight race, the NU A boat finished with a time of 13:27.48, 5 seconds ahead of Radcliffe’s Lightweight Eight. The NU A men’s boat beat out Harvard’s C boat by a full 13 seconds. 

In addition to Northeastern’s A boats, other notable finishes came in the Men’s Championship Four category with the NU C boat in eighth place, with a time of 13:14.9, as well as the Women’s Championship Eight category with 14th and 17th place finishes for the NU B and D boats.

With the conclusion of the fall season, the team will now begin their winter training period,  which consists of land training as well as other cardio and strength training.   

In the spring, the team will go on to compete in some of the biggest races of the season including the NCAA Division I Rowing Championship as well as the Intercollegiate Rowing Championship.

As they move out of the fall season, the team hopes to continue to work toward their goals over the course of the winter.

“Last year we were in the top 20. We’re trying to push to be even better than we were last year so that’s a big goal for our team,” Shea said. “So we’re going to do a lot of training throughout the winter and the spring to make that possible.”

As the Huskies train through the winter and move into the most competitive part of the season this spring, the message from the team is clear.

“I would like to see us beat BU this spring,” Budike said. “The Charles is our river.”