The Sprints were held on Lake Quinsigamond in Worcester, MA, a short 40-mile bus trip from MIT.  It's a near-perfect course with six well marked lanes. For Heavyweight Crews, the Eastern Sprints was the second most important race of the season. With Division I rowing schools on both coasts, the Eastern and Western Sprints were preliminary to their race for the national championship, the IRA, which was rowed annually in early June. However, in those days, only nine colleges rowed Lightweight Crew at the NCAA Division I level, all nine of them in the eastern half of the United States.  Therefore, the winner of the Eastern Sprints was the NCAA Lightweight Champion. We had just one more race before the season was over and done.
 
Two heats of four and five crews were rowed in the morning, with the top three finishers in each heat advancing to the Saturday afternoon Finals.  We were confident that, barring some unforeseen disaster, we would qualify for the Finals.  The strategy was to race just well enough to avoid a fourth place finish, as such a finish would assure an early bus ride home.
 
The outcome of the heats fell in line with the pre-race seedings. MIT would the row the Finals in lane one, with pre-race favorite Harvard in the center lane, Cornell and Navy on either side. The other finalists, most probably, were Princeton and either Yale or Dartmouth. I cannot remember.
 
Being positioned in Lane One was not a factor in the race.  If anything, I felt that it was to our advantage. Part of my responsibility as coxswain was to keep everyone in our boat informed about what was going on around them. Frankly, sitting so close to the water, it was very difficult to see what was going on way over in lanes 5 and 6, but I had Harvard clearly in my sights every stroke of the race. We focused on Harvard, and I would be quite certain that Navy and Cornell were doing the same. Harvard was the crew to beat, having won the Sprints for as far back as any of us could remember.
 
The weather was great—cool and cloudy, with a light breeze. Our racing start and first 500 meters, the sections of the race that had been our weakest, went well. At the 1000 meter (halfway) mark, the crew felt strong and we were a solid half length up on Harvard. From my vantage point, Cornell and Navy appeared to be dead even, but a full length ahead. I don't remember much about the next 500 meters except that we continued to pull away from Harvard but gained no ground whatsoever on either Cornell or Navy. My best guess is that both had a quarter length of open water on us at 1500 meters.

In a normal race, I would scream out "40 strokes to go" at 1700 meters. We would begin a countdown during which our mid-race pace of 34-35 strokes-per-minute would increase gradually to well into the high forties just before the finish line. We had practiced this sprint to the finish at least a hundred times.
 
But this was no normal race. Mark Barron, our outstanding sophomore stroke, had already sensed that it was now or never. By the time I called out "40 more," he had already taken the stroke up to almost forty strokes-per-minute. "We're moving" was my next cry. It almost seemed like we were lifting the boat out of the water, gaining at least a yard on every stroke. Another Legendary Sprint was under way, but was there enough water between us and the finish line for us to surge into the lead? Or, would we peak too soon, only to fall back?
 
With ten strokes to go we were right along side Cornell—dead even for the lead. It was more difficult to see through Cornell over to Navy, but they appeared to be right there with us. It was a frantic blur after that. Cornell was ahead; we were ahead; Navy was ahead. The lead seemed to change hands on every stroke, but no one could gain as much as a two-foot advantage over the other!
 
Suddenly, it was over. We took the extra stroke or two as was the custom to make absolutely sure that we were across the line, as did Cornell and Navy. Then, a deafening silence. The normal unrestrained shouts of victory by the winners were completely missing. Just 27 young men, silently and totally exhausted. Harvard wasted no time in paddling back to the boathouse. An oarsman in one of the other boats yelled over, "Who won?" We just shrugged our shoulders.
 
Whose bow had been inches ahead when we crossed the finish line? We had no idea. The usual custom was that the Chief Judge would summon the victors over to the dock to receive their medals. On this day, there were no announcements from the shoreline—just silence. It seemed that we sat there for an eternity. In reality, it was probably more like ten or fifteen minutes. Finally, the Chief Judge came to the microphone to announce his decision....

Footnote: I had turned my camera over to a classmate before the race. The quality of the picture below is very, very poor but, regretfully, is the only one taken with my camera at the event. Normally, such a slide would be tossed away. We are about 50 yards from the finish line, with about ten strokes to go. You may just be able to decipher the finish line, that vertical post on the far shore. MIT is in the near lane, Cornell in the center and Navy on the outside. All three have OPEN WATER on the only other crew clearly visible in the picture, a crew wearing dark crimson rowing shirts. That would be Harvard.  I decided to keep the slide.