Yale Athletics

Last season, the Yale men’s heavyweight crew team seized its seventh-consecutive Eastern Sprints and Ivy League Championship titles and secured fourth place in the national Intercollegiate Rowing Association Championship. These titles, combined with a victory over Harvard in June, capped off the final season of head coach Steve Gladstone’s 50-plus-year coaching career. Gladstone, tied for all-time winningest American collegiate crew coach, left big shoes to fill.

Thankfully, the team is in extremely capable hands. Mike Gennaro, who served as Gladstone’s second in command since 2016, has moved up to head coach. Gennaro’s own rowing career is studded with success: among other accolades, he stroked the 2011 U.S. Under-23 8+ and set a world record, and he achieved an alternate position for the 2012 London Summer Olympic Games. 

Gennaro’s promotion was not the only staffing change instituted this season. The team also promoted its third coach, Matt Fluhr, to the second position, and hired longtime volunteer coach, Henri LaLiberte, as the third member of the coaching staff. In July 2023, LaLiberte served as an assistant coach alongside Gladstone for the U.S. Men’s Senior National Team.

“It’s been a seamless transition,” said Harry Keenan ’24, team captain and first varsity coxswain. “Mike brings to the table a ton of success and frankly he just knows what to do.”

Since the founding of Yale’s boat club in 1843, Keenan is only the second coxswain to be chosen as captain of the team. Gennaro said to Yale Athletics that Keenan’s captaincy as coxswain “speaks volumes to how much he is respected by our squad.”

Last year, Keenan coxed first varsity through an undefeated dual race season and earned First Team All-Ivy.

This Saturday, the top four heavyweight boats will take on Brown, Harvard, Northeastern, Washington and Stanford at the IRA Sarasota Invitational.

At this event last year, the first and fourth varsities came in first. The second varsity finished third to Brown and Washington, and the third varsity finished second to Washington.

The invitational marks the first competition of the team’s spring racing season — and it will be followed by three dual races, the Eastern Sprints and IRA Championships, and, finally, the 157th iteration of the iconic Yale-Harvard Regatta in June.

When asked about the team’s goals for the season, Keenan emphasized the importance of consistent work leading up to the day of a race, not just the crew’s performance on the day itself.

“Obviously we want to get results in the big races, but that comes from executing day in and day out,” the senior coxswain said. “We’re looking to go as fast as we can, and hopefully that is enough to bring home the medals we want.”

Yale is the oldest collegiate boat club in America.