This NYTimes.com article will disappear in seven days, but the key facts are as follows. Harvard heavyweights won their first IRA national championship ever, capping an undefeated season to date (including Sprints). Most years, the crew cannot attend because of the Harvard-Yale race. Also, Charlie Butt’s crew came through to win the lightweight race, getting faster since Eastern Sprints. Every odd year since 1991, Charlie’s crew has won the national championship. I was part of two of those crews. It was 10 years ago in Camden, New Jersey (where today’s races were held) that our crew came back from getting surprised by Dartmouth at Sprints to win by open water at the IRAs. I just remember that we practiced starts incessantly in the intervening weeks, knowing that as long as no one got away from us early, the race was ours. We blistered everyone in the first 500 meters, and the result was foregone — but it was as exhausting as most any race I ever rowed, even knowing halfway through that we were going to win. Hate to live in the past, but that team sport surge of energy and emotion is behind me now. Congrats to this year’s crews… and Harry Parker and Charlie Butt.