The Harvard men's lightweight crew team found itself in good straits on the Schuylkill River on Saturday.

In its first race of the year, the Crimson took first with four of its five boats in Philadelphia against Cornell and Penn.

"There was a strong showing across the squad," co-captain Thomas Fallows said. "Everyone won their race except for the first freshman boat, but even they looked quite strong, and will do pretty well this year."

The Crimson's first varsity boat won with a time of 5:56.2, followed by Cornell at 6:10.3 and Penn at 6:16.9.

"I'd say we were pretty close with Cornell for the first 500 meters before we pulled away," junior coxswain Sujit Raman said. "We rowed a very solid middle thousand, which is what we were looking for."

Harvard's second varsity boat also took home a victory, posting the second-fastest time of the meet after Harvard's first varsity squad. The Crimson posted a time of 6:06.2, 5.6 seconds ahead of Cornell and 23.5 seconds ahead of Penn.

The Crimson's third varsity boat beat Cornell's third boat by 3.17 seconds, with a time of 6:22.18.

For the freshmen, the first boat marked the only blemish on the day, as the Crimson's 6:16.7 was edged out by Cornell's 6:12.6 but was good enough to beat Penn.

The second freshman boat, however, turned in a time of 6:31.6 to beat both Cornell and Penn.

"This was as expected," Fallows said. "A lot of the other teams started racing earlier in the year, so we were quite ready to go out there and show people what we've got."

Cornell and Penn were the right teams for the Crimson to open with this season.

"Penn has had a rough season thus far, losing significantly to Yale and Rutgers," Fallows said. "Cornell has a lot of raw talent, and they were rather shell-shocked. I expect that they will be faster later on in the year."

The goal for the Crimson, of course, is improvement.

"The goal is to just get faster every week," Raman said.

The Radcliffe teams also fared well on the weekend.