“It won’t affect our preparations too much,” Lamont said. “This regatta will be the culmination of a lot of hard work this fall. The real championship events occur this spring. Although this [regatta] is important to us, we are looking at it as a stepping-stone to improving in the winter, in the offseason, and in the spring when our season restarts.”

When asked what the team needs for a successful final regatta, O’Connor stressed the importance of improvement in his team’s starts.

“Overall as a team the one thing we can do in all of our regattas is consistently get good starts,” O’Connor said. “We have been inconsistent in getting good starts, and until we can do that we are going to have a hard time knowing just how good we can be.”

No matter what happens this weekend, Lamont and his teammates will be proud of their accomplishments.

“We knew we were on the cusp of qualifying, so qualifying was an accomplishment for us,” Lamont said. “It demonstrates some of the hard work people have put in and the improvement that we have made over the course of this fall.”

—Staff writer Blake Sundel can be reached at bsundel@college.harvard.edu.