Heavyweight Crew beats Brown, Lightweight Crew claims second behind Bulldogs

The Princeton heavyweight and lightweight crew teams pulled off their regular-season finales this weekend, with the heavyweight team finishing off Brown and their lightweight counterparts defeating Harvard to take second place in the Harvard-Yale-Princeton regatta.

The heavyweight team enjoyed a clean sweep over the Brown Bears to win their third consecutive Content Cup, moving their final regular-season record to 8-1. All four of the Tigers' boats finished ahead of their Brown counterparts in this final race for the seniors, with Princeton’s first varsity boat coming in first overall with a time of 5:48.4, 4.3 seconds ahead of the Bears’ first varsity.

Senior Ed Northrop expressed satisfaction in the team’s performance.

"The season has been a cumulative effort, and having solid momentum is a major key to postseason success," he noted. "Rowing's a pretty pure sport in that there's no special moves or plays. Our focus has been on generating boat speed, and going 2000 meters really, really fast. I think that we did this really well today. Not just in the first varsity, but in all boats - which is both impressive and exciting."

The heavyweight team will now look toward the Eastern Sprints, to be held onMay 15at Lake Quinsigamond, Mass. The Tigers will likely find themselves the No. 2 seed at the event behind top-ranked Yale; the Bulldogs are the only team to have defeated the Tigers this spring season. Nevertheless, Princeton’s string of convincing performances, particularly at the tail end of its season, place the team in an excellent position to contend.

Meanwhile, the lightweight team also faced a pair of strong performances as they took on traditional rivals Harvard and Yale for the Goldthwait and Vogel Cups. The top-ranked Yale lightweights took first place in a tightly contested matchup, with the Bulldogs’ first varsity finishing barely three seconds ahead of Princeton’s boat. Nevertheless, the Tigers had the satisfaction of defeating Harvard, with their first varsity besting the Crimson by 3.4 seconds.

Like the heavyweight team, Princeton’s lightweight squad will now also prepare for the Eastern Sprints on the 15th. The lightweight team has fallen only to Columbia and Yale in the spring season, and will look for a favorable seed in the Sprints, as well as a chance to vie for the title.

Northrop likely voiced both teams’ emotions as he anticipated the lead-up to Princeton’s next major competition—and opportunity.

“The two weeks prior to Sprints allows us to get after it like a dog after the mailman," he observed. "We're about to go into the trenches and it should be a tough but rewarding couple of weeks. We have some very obvious goals for the postseason and we will have to put in a good chunk of training in order to achieve these goals. Like BlackFridayshopping, everyone wants the same thing and we're going to have to fight for it"