1977 - the year that wasn't - Part Five, the Sprints and Packard Cup

Sunday morning, May 15, the other crews took to the water. The morning heats were a success for SU as, for the first time on record, all three eights qualified for the Grand Finals. But qualifying was one thing; defeating crews that had beaten them handily earlier in the season was an entirely different matter. Once again, Harvard won the Varsity event followed by Penn and Cornell with Syracuse just out of the medals in fourth. While SU had indeed gotten faster since the meeting in Boston, Harvard had done that, and more. Notably, the third place medalists were none other than the Big Red, and while they had beaten SU again, this time the margin had shrunk to barely a second. SU had made up a full two lengths on Cornell in three weeks.

The big boat wasn’t the only crew that was faster. The JV eight, stroked by Bob Devlin closed a bit of its gap to Harvard in finishing fifth in the Grands. Even more impressive was the performance of the fourth-place Syracuse freshman eight, which finished just over a length behind first-place Penn while beating Harvard by a second. Princeton and Yale, silver and bronze medalists, both finished within a half-second of Penn. Drew’s crew had gained twelve seconds on the Crimson in a month.

With exams and the Sprints behind them, the crews were looking forward to the camaraderie of IRA camp at the Longbranch Boathouse. This was the time when Syracuse Crew made big improvements – with school over, great weather, and intense but shorter workouts, all focus was on the Regatta.

But before the IRA, SU would take on Dartmouth and MIT at the Packard Cup in Hanover, NH. 1977 wasn’t a great year for the Big Green and MIT’s excellent crews from the early seventies had graduated most of their horses. The result was the SU Varsity taking the Packard Cup, defeating MIT by nine seconds and Dartmouth by over thirteen.