Women's lightweight crew cruises past Wisconsin, openweights beat Penn

The women's lightweight crew knows what it is like to be the favorite. They know the pressure of high expectations, they know how it feels to be a target and they know that getting to the top does not mean anything if you cannot stay there. A few weeks ago in San Diego, the Tigers let that pressure get to them and it cost them a race against Wisconsin and the nation's No. 1 ranking.

This weekend in the Zurich World Cup on Mercer Lake, racing as underdogs against the Wisconsin Badgers, the Tigers turned the tables, toppling the Badgers by two seconds and reclaiming their position as the team to beat for the national title. Despite the longstanding Princeton/Radcliffe rivalry, the recent history between Princeton and Wisconsin made the Tigers' seven-second victory over third-place Radcliffe almost an afterthought.

"Facing Wisconsin for the third time this season we knew we had our work cut out for us," junior stroke Katie Griswold said. "Although we beat them by five seconds in our first race on the Cooper River, we lost by less than a second when we faced them in San Diego.

"We felt a big part of that loss was due to a slow first half of the race, and so we've been working hard ever since to improve our starts and get comfortable at our cruising speed."

The strategy certainly seemed to work, as the Tigers made sure they wouldn't have to rely on a last second sprint to catch up to the Badgers.

"During the race on Saturday we got off to a strong start and held even with Wisconsin. Then, near the middle of the race, we used our moves to pull ahead, and that cushion ended up making the difference," Griswold said.

The openweight women did not have any bones to pick or scores to settle this weekend, but that did not stop them from putting on an impressive display of domination, destroying second-place Penn by 15 seconds.

Dartmouth, a blip on the horizon, fell 21 seconds short of the Tiger juggernaut. The Tigers have not come close to losing since a season-opening loss to top-ranked Brown.

Next weekend, the openweights will look to continue their run of victories as they take on Georgetown and George Washington on Lake Carnegie. The lightweights will also be in action, taking on those same schools on the same lake, and aiming for the same result.

As the season moves quickly towards its climax for the lightweights, the prospects are certainly encouraging. In the past month, the Tigers have essentially made up three seconds on the rival Badgers, and in the next few weeks before Sprints, they will continue to work hard and hopefully, improve.

As Griswold explains, the Tigers know that they have only won a battle — the war has yet to be decided.

"Winning this weekend was very exciting but I think that everyone knows we will have to continue to work hard for the next few weeks if we want to beat Wisconsin and win the Eastern Sprints."