The lightweight league has chased Harvard all this season--and all last season, too, in the 1V--and gave it one more shot in a ripping tail at the IRA. The Crimson handled all of it: the pressure, the water, and their own expectations for themselves to win both the 1V and 2V.

"Never enough," was the motto of the Harvard 2V lights all season, three man David Picard told row2k afterwards, and that surely applies across the H150 squad. The gold medals they scooped up on Sunday cap off undefeated seasons--and successful title defenses--for each crew, and won Harvard the team trophy as well. It is the 11th National Championship for the Harvard Lights, and the second under head coach Billy Boyce.

In the 1V Grand, the rest of the medals signal a bit of a shake-up in the league: a silver by Dartmouth, a team cut during COVID completing a rise all the way back to the IRA podium, and a bronze by MIT, their first IRA medal ever.

You can catch the finish of the race here:

2025 IRA Champions in the V8!

Now 11x CHAMPS#GoCrimson pic.twitter.com/mgaFn7TKY6

— Harvard Lightweights (@Harvard_Lights) June 1, 2025

In the 2V, Penn in second and Columbia in third rounded out the medals.

Light Men's 1V Gold - Harvard

"It just keeps upping the ante," Coach Boyce admitted after he came up from the medals dock to meet the media.

"At the start of the year, we set a goal to do what we did, but then we didn't talk about it too much throughout the year. We just stuck to the process.

"With each win, with each step along the way, I think it ratcheted up the pressure a little bit because you start to string it together and then it's, are they going to go undefeated? Are they going to go back to back? Are they going to finish the perfect season?

"Both the varsity and the JV responded so well under that pressure," Boyce said.

Harvard 1V Lights

"Their capacity to execute was so impressive, and especially on a day like this. It was challenging out there. I was nervous, just looking at the water, but we row on the Basin and so we're prepared for anything."

At this peak of success, anyone with a short memory might forget that this run by Harvard's 1V, even as it stretches out, remains part of a comeback story, starting with the 2022 season where they missed the IRA altogether.

Brahm Erdmann, the senior in the seven seat, has been in the 1V for that whole journey: as a freshman when Harvard did not qualify in 2022, as a sophomore when they returned and won a surprising silver, as a junior when they won Sprints for the first time since 2013 en-route to their first perfect season together and IRA gold, and now this year, to finish the ride. The last time anyone was ahead of his crew was the Princeton boat that won the 2023 IRA.

"Being in the boat is a joy," Erdmann said.

"My favorite thing I do every day is to be in this boat, but at the same time, it is a commitment that you have to make. When you're a Harvard lightweight, and you race in the Harvard Lightweight varsity, you have to be very honest with yourself every day. Because these things don't really happen by chance.

"Excellence is something that we pursue every day. We have a lot of integrity, we don't lie to ourselves. We're very honest with ourselves.

H150s on top again

"We practice relentlessly, and we practice as we would in a race," he explained. "We go out there and we really work when we're in training, and then these races just kind of feel like another day.

"It's almost like a relief when you win, more than it is a joy, because you know that you have the speed. We find it all the time in training. So you just want to go out there and do what you know you can do. And when we do, it's worked out pretty well for two years now."

We should mention here--as we did in a note on the heavyweight report--that Harvard's time in the Lightweight 1V Grand was indeed 0.1 seconds faster than Washington's in the Heavyweight Grand Final. Conditions were gusty, and perhaps "variable" doesn't even begin to cover it, but let the online debates begin (and let the record also show that the winning time in the race that ran in between, the Heavyweight Petite, was five seconds faster: Cal's 5:24).

Light Men's 2V Gold - Harvard

The key to the Harvard 2V's unblemished record was that "never enough" approach.

"From the start of the year, the attitude we had was it was never enough," said Picard, one of the four senior oarsmen in the crew. "We might have a work out that you could have been happy with, but we were always pushing for more.

"That attitude, when you start that early, you reap what you get."

Harvard 2V Lights

"It wasn't a bad atmosphere, this never enough," Picard added. "No one was upset, but it was always, we can do more. When we won a race by open water, we'd say next time, let's go for more."

The guys in the crew had good motivation for not being satisfied: the experience of not being fast enough in the regular season a year ago.

"Last year, the JV won IRAs, but we had lost our first few dual races and the HYPs," Picard explained. "So we always had this feeling--don't get outworked, don't be complacent--because we had lost and then won IRAs last year. Keeping that in mind, to never get complacent, was a great attitude to have together.

"We had a meeting at the start of the year and we said we wanted to go undefeated, which I think a lot of people would be scared to talk about.

"It takes courage to have big goals, but then having to back that up, we did what we said we were going to do, and that was every day, day in and day out. It was the little things. You could ignore them, but if you don't, then you get what we had this year."

Light Men's 1V Silver - Dartmouth

The silver the Dartmouth Lights was a long time coming, and not just because their last medal came back in 2012 on this same course. Dartmouth getting back on the IRA podium took all these steps:

• getting reinstated mid-spring 2021 after getting cut during COVID
• taking fourth just months later in the Heavyweight Fours with the guys left on the team
• missing the IRA in 2022
• making the IRA in 2023, but missing the final
• making the final at the 2024 IRA and taking 5th
• recovering from a Sprints this year where none of the eights medaled

Oh, and throw their row2k Recap-worthy dead heat with Princeton this spring into the mix for good measure.

Dartmouth 1V Lights

"We had a really good dual racing season," said head coach Trevor Michelson after it was all over. "We tied Princeton, then we lost a couple of races, but they were all really small margins so we knew we were going to be pretty good.

"We're always good at peaking at the right time, but we underperformed at the Sprints as a team and were really disappointed."

Michelson, a inveterate optimist, looked at the Sprints results and the lane assignments, and just decided that his crews would have been in the medals if they'd been on the other side of the course.

"I saw us improve our margin off MIT and close our gap on Penn from the duals, and those are the only crews I counted, because they were on our side of the course. If we were on the other side of the course, we would've been on the podium there, too.

"So I said keep the faith and let's really lock in these next two weeks.

"We talk about the IRA all year," Michelson said. "We have a countdown for it on the whiteboard and we talk about having our best performance at the biggest race of the year. I've been talking about that for eight years and it finally happened."

Dartmouth 1V Lights

"All credit to those guys for putting it all together in the biggest stage and getting it done. Sometimes it just all works out and that usually coincides with when you have really good guys," Michelson said, adding, "and we have some really good guys.

"We knew the conditions were going to be challenging. We set up our race plan and our rig for those conditions. Our guys were all on the same page. Our coxswain, Max Konzerowsky, had the performance of his life. Our stroke seat Ryan Tripp had the performance of his life."

Tripp, as it turns out, is the only recruit left from the group who would have come to Dartmouth if the program hadn't been cut; he deferred a year, and then came in to join the group of walk-ons Michelson and then-head coach Dan Roock used to rebuild the roster.

"The thing we had that no one else in the league had is Ryan Tripp," Michelson confessed. "I credit him with helping me turn this team around. He's the only senior in the crew. We put them in the stroke seat because he's a great stroke and an incredibly talented athlete, but every single guy in that boat wanted to do it for him."

Michelson giving Tripp his medal

"Having him in the stroke seat was a last-minute change and it was less technical and more emotional. I knew he would lay down a good rhythm because he's really tough, but more importantly, I knew our guys would follow him through hell and back."

As thrilling as the 1V's full pull was behind Tripp's rhythm, Michelson was even more pleased with Dartmouth's showing in the team standings, taking second overall ahead of Penn and Princeton.

"I see this as the rebirth of Dartmouth Lightweight Rowing. It's really rewarding not just for me and the current guys on the team, but for all of our alums, to see that we're back."

Light Men's 1V Bronze - MIT

MIT made the jump back into the Sprints league this year, and while they have been making it to the IRA the past few seasons by qualifying at the Dad Vail, going back to the Sprints seems like it was a pretty good idea.

At least, that is what the guys in the crew said to head Coach Will Oliver when they hit the medals dock, joking that it was a good thing they did Sprints. That experience, of a full season in the Sprints league and racing these same crews in Worcester just two weeks ago--along, of course, with the right group of athletes who had the speed to be in the mix--put them in good stead on the race course in the final. They worked their way to the medal too, coming through Penn and Princeton, and then holding off Penn's final sprint.

MIT 1V Lights

Some other experience that might have helped? Knowing the Cooper, thanks to their Dad Vail wins in 2023 and 2024. You could tell MIT had won here on the Cooper before, because coxswain Jane Atkinson rowed right past the medals dock and then spun to come in bow-to-finish-line, using the Dad Vail traffic pattern just like she did a year ago before this trophy-hoisting photo.

MIT had only ever even raced the IRA final twice before, in 1992 and 1993, and this is the school's first IRA medal in a varsity eight since their heavies won a silver in 1975.

"I don't think I've ever been as nervous as I was on that line," said Harry Sillifant, the MIT stroke.

"It's been a pretty intense year for us, but with all our training, this is what we came out here to do from the start. We did what we wanted to do."

MIT 1V Lights

While they were on the dock, Coach Oliver also told the crew that he had just found out they earned this year's Rusty Callow Award, which the EARC coaches vote on each year--and given to the Sprints crew, heavy or light, that best personifies "spirit, courage and unity."

Oliver also mentioned to row2k that there is only one senior in the boat and, maybe the best news for MIT: three first-years.

Notes From The Course

Newbs 'In The Drivers Seat' - Plenty of rowers played The "we won, so now I get to drive" card on the medals dock--tho we have to say, that is a risky play in a Cooper tail wind, mostly because the recovery docks sit parallel to the wind. But we didn't hear any reports of bad drivers crashing on re-entry after the row back out of the boatyard, so we guess they 'figured it out'--whew.

Graduation Day - Rowers and coxswains know: the school year isn't really over until your boat is tied down on the trailer at the end of the IRA--so what better place to celebrate your graduation than in the boatyard, with a gold medal and a stack of racing shirts:

Congrats to H150s--and now Harvard grads--Anya Cheng and Megan Ong

Gonna Be Here A While - So the bronze medalists came to the dock first, of course, but since the victory ceremonies were scheduled so that the next race would go by before they started, the 3rd place crews had a lot of time to sit on the dock--not getting out of the boat--before their names would be announced. Truth be told, a lot of those crews on the day were not all that happy to be third, so it was an awkward wait at some points, but not for the lightweight men's crews: both the MIT 1V and Columbia 2V were thrilled to medal...and MIT even used the time wisely, to sponge out all the water they took on in the final 1000 meters of the course.

IRA Firsts - It's hard to notch a first when your championship regatta goes back 122 years--and for the record, the winning teams on Sunday all 'score' in the double digits on titles now (UW 21 wins, H150 11 wins, Princeton LW 10 wins)--but there were some notable firsts and best-evers at this year's IRA. Here's our running list, but if we missed one, let us know and we'll add it here:

• Harvard 3V - first gold, first Stewards Cup
• Colby 2V Eight - first medal, first final, first appearance
• Mercyhurst LM Four - first medal, first final
• MIT LM 1V - first medal
• Syracuse - best Ten Eyck finish, first time 1V-2V-3V all in Grands (in 1978, it was 1V-2V-1F, natch)
• Trinity - first D3 title
• Tufts - first D3 team title, first 2V two-peat