The Wesleyan men’s crew team came into the spring 2024 season with high expectations. After a national runner-up title the year before, the Cards looked to let everyone know how hard they were working and how fast their boats could fly.

While most teams are in season for three to five months, the crew team trains for nine, focusing on continual progress.

“You have to be disciplined throughout the whole year,” Pierce Buckner-Wolfson ’26 said. “You have to know that what you’re doing now will really have an effect on what happens at the end of the season. So every day matters, as we like to put it, every 1% [better] every day, it compounds on itself. So our fall and winter season, that’s what makes champions.”

The team tore through a successful fall season and several months of winter training getting ready for their spring season, and right out of the gate they did not disappoint. In their first three spring races the Cardinals were perfect as they beat the Coast Guard in a one-on-one race, and took first in the Class of 2003 Cup in a three-boat race against No. 3 Tufts and No. 5 Bates. 

On Saturday, April 20, the Wesleyan varsity 8 boat (V8) lined up to race against the defending DIII Intercollegiate Rowing Association (IRA) National Champion, No. 4 Williams, with a Little Three title waiting at the finish line. The V8 boat fielded a lineup of Asher Israel ’26 (coxswain), Buckner-Wolfson, Nelson Bellows ’26, Emmett Nunes ’23 M.A. ’24, Gus Shuman ’27, Eli Smirin ’26, Paul Kiyonaga ’25, Hugo Harington ’25, and Brett Beaman ’26. Through heavy winds the Cardinals surged to a decisive victory with a time of 6:39.19, beating the Ephs by nearly eight seconds. This was the first Little Three title in five years for the program and their widest margin of victory in the event since 1993.

The win boosted team confidence going into the latter part of the season.

“The Little Three was a pretty big deal for us,” Israel said. “We hadn’t won that event in a while. And I think coming off the big confidence booster from the Little Three, getting a little time to ourselves to just train up, it helped the team get a little closer, just build a little more trust. I think it helped us really get ready for New England’s [Championship] and the races afterward.”

With the Little Three behind them, the Cardinals concluded the dual-racing and entered the championship racing season, quite simply a whole different ball game.

Shuman highlighted the difference between the types of competition.

“Throughout the season, we were constantly working on our technique, working on our focus,” Shuman said. “In dual-racing, to some extent, if you’re good off the start, you can win the race no matter what, but in a regatta where there’s six lanes, eight lanes, it’s much less of a mental cat and mouse game. It’s just getting the boat moving to speed, just make it move. And so I think we just worked on the cadence of our race.”

On Saturday, May 4, the Cardinals lined up for the first heat of the New England Championships. They cruised to a victory in their heat setting up a grand final featuring all of the top five nationally ranked teams and the MIT crew, which competes at the Division I level. The Cards knew nothing would be handed to them.

“That was a pretty exciting race, it wasn’t an easy one,” Israel said. “We were held pretty close for about the first 1600 meters of the race by Trinity, and then in the last quarter the whole boat, and especially my stroke seat Pierce [Buckner-Wolfson], really just kicked us up a gear, and we stepped away. It was a pretty great feeling.”

The Cards hit the finish line with a time of 5:57.59, ahead of the MIT Engineers by over a second and the Bantams by a little under two. The win was once again a big confidence boost for the team, but they all knew there was more work to be done.

“It was a good experience to have a team [like MIT] who’s up on you, pushing you through the whole race and making it a tough race, because every time you push that much harder, you learn from it,” Buckner-Wolfson said. “It’s building your confidence, but you can’t be too excited because you’re racing the same teams next weekend. You have to be locked in for the whole season. Every race matters. Everything you do matters. So it’s great to get that win, but it should be really setting you up for the coming weeks and the coming races.”

With the fifth New England Championship (NEC) in program history secured, the Cards turned their attention to the penultimate race of their entire season, the National Invitational Rowing Championship (NIRC) at which a NESCAC champion would be crowned.

“We talked about the existence of pressure,” Shuman said. “But by this point we’ve raced all these teams, and realistically the only pressure you have is to go out there and try your hardest to show an effort reflective of what kind of team we are.”

Shuman gave his perspective on the race from the water.

“We think we’ve gotten off better than we did at NEC,” Shuman said. “We think we’re leading the pack. And suddenly, as we cross the bow of Trinity, we see what we haven’t seen the whole race: Williams. They are leading us by length, and so we had to really dig it in and track them down. We just need to stay internal, stay composed, do our thing. The rest will fall into place, yeah, and so we track them down. We were very happy about that race, and then we sort of set our minds to the last one.”

Israel underscored the importance of keeping focus in a race like the NIRC.

“So one of the things my coach, Phil Carney, has me do as the coxswain is record an MP3 for all the races,” Israel said. “And the biggest thing you can hear on the recording, and then see in the video of it is that up until that point, say 700 meters to go, we’re dead level with Williams, maybe even losing by a second or two. And I think it really just turned into more internal focus because we knew we were losing the race at that point. And I think that was the big change in the last, in the last little bit. The guys knew there was a lot on the line, so they gave 115%. But I think a lot of it was just focusing on what we can do within our boat. And it paid off.”

It paid off as the Cards crossed the line at 5:56.71 with Williams a second behind, securing the first NESCAC Championship in 56 years of Wesleyan men’s crew. 

The win meant that the 2023–24 team would have their names on the record books, but the season was still unfinished as the team turned their attention to the DIII IRA National Rowing Championship, the marquee event of the entire nine-month season.

Before the team traveled to Worcester, Mass. to compete, they had two weeks on campus, and with exams out of the way, preparation for the IRAs was paramount.

“The team is really dialed in, because this is the only thing we’re doing for these two weeks,” Buckner-Wolfson said. “So we’re training twice a day, and making sure every stroke counts. Everyone’s getting faster in these two weeks. So we have to get faster as well. So making sure of every practice, we practice with intention. We know what we’re looking to do.”

The team balanced training with team bonding, even including other sports.

“It’s really beautiful on campus around that time of the year, after like, seven months of darkness, everything is lush,” Shuman said. “The river is really beautiful and we were still working hard, but it was really just like a treat to be on campus, to be with all of our friends. We played a lot of croquet, and [President] Michael Roth [’78] actually hit a celeb-shot in for one of the croquet teams. I’ve never played croquet before, but it’s actually, it’s actually very fun. It was a very positive mentality during that span.”

Two days before the finals began, the Cards headed up to Lake Quinsigamond to get in practice laps on the course which would hold the championship race. The IRAs began with the qualification heats on Friday, May 31, and the Cards aced theirs, beating Tufts by two and a half seconds. However, they took nothing for granted, knowing that every team had gotten faster since they last raced at the NIRCs. 

Faced with the challenge of the season, and with nothing but excitement and determination left on the table, the team suited up for the grand final on Saturday, June 1 to close out the season. 

“This boat is not going to come back together and get to row together one more time,” Buckner-Wolfson said. “So it’s your last hurrah with these guys. And I think the idea of what you’ve done with them is something to be proud of. And so taking that kind of idea into the final race, confidence and trust in one another. We were confident in our speed throughout the whole season. So we were confident in ourselves for the last race.”

As the boats took off Trinity surged forward but quickly lost steam, and the Cardinals fast and steady base pace showed through as they took the lead in the middle portion of the race. They posted the fastest minute splits from 500m to 1000m, 1:26.336, and from 1000m to 1500m, 1:26.924, but then something shifted. 

“We were pretty fantastic from the 500[m] marker to the 1500[m] marker,” Israel said. “I think it was probably the best rowing we did all year. The last 500 looked a little different. They started drawing closer, closer, closer. And then in the last 250 they really just hit the gas and probably took a second back over 150 meters. But we just held on to it, and coming across the line, I knew we won. It was just elation, so much work went into that win. And we knew that Williams had their best race, and we had our best race, yeah, we just had more speed.”

The Cardinals crossed the finish line 0.207 seconds ahead of the Ephs to win their first ever DIII IRA National Championship with an event record-setting time of 5:41.53. All of the work, the hours, everything that had occurred over the last nine months, paid off as the V8 boat cruised through the waters of Lake Quinsigamond, everyone inside a national champion.

“You’re beyond exhausted, your body’s dead, but the fact that you just did what you did throughout the whole year, like all the stuff I did throughout the winter and the previous fall, the little things I gave up to be able to do this is, that’s when it really matters,” Buckner-Wolfson said. “I did it for a reason, and we did it together, and I love the guys. It’s a special moment to be able to share that with them.”

Five Cardinals were named as All Americans with Israel, Buckner-Wolfson, and Nunes selected to the First Team, and Bellows and Smirin receiving Second Team honors. Save for Nunes, all of the honorees and other V8 rowers are returning for what should be a promising season. Fall competition begins on Saturday, Oct. 5 with the Dartmouth Invitational, and although the team will look slightly different, as always the goal is the same.

Ethan Lee can be reached at ejlee@wesleyan.edu.