Crew teams find success on Lake Carnegie and in California

This weekend was a sweep on the water at Lake Carnegie. All three Princeton crew teams racing won all of their races.

No opposing team came within six seconds of a Tiger boat on Saturday, both in Princeton and at the San Diego Crew Classic, in which the lightweight women raced.

"It was a good start to the season," senior heavyweight Sean McCormick said. "We know the program can do that well."

In a poor racing environment, the Tigers roared through the three visiting schools, Georgetown, Rutgers and Columbia.

"The conditions were a little heavy," McCormick said. "There was a real strong headwind."

Even those races that included two Princeton boats saw no challenger rival the Tigers' dominance.

In response to the sweep, McCormick said, "You never can expect something like that, but you can be happy when it happens."

On Saturday, each of the varsity eight lightweight men's teams won its race handily, by about eight seconds a piece.

Surprisingly, the varsity four race ended up with the Princeton B team finishing just under a second ahead of the Princeton A team, which still defeated Columbia by a massive 22 seconds.

"We were working with an eight we split up because Columbia only brought four dudes down to race our [third varsity]," senior Brandon Hall said. "We even had different lineups for Saturday and Sunday."

Hall described the tight finish as a "blood feud at the finish line. We were just sort of going at it. It was just two evenly matched boats."

On Sunday, the Tigers lightweight men won all of their races as well, in much better conditions than Saturday, with only a slight headwind. Both the Varsity eight and the novice boats won their races easily, while another battle ensued between A and B boats in the Varsity four race.

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In the end, the A boat won by a mere five hundreds of a second, in what Hall called a "pretty intense" race. Penn finished about 25 seconds behind in what was, in fact, a race only between the two Tiger boats.

Away from Lake Carnegie, the women's lightweight team dominated its preliminary heat, beating its nearest competitor, Queens, by over 23 seconds. However, they did not end the San Diego Crew Classic on quite as high a note, finishing in second place to perennial rival Wisconsin, while Stanford, a major threat, ended the race in fifth place.

The women's open crew raced Columbia and Rutgers at home and came away with clear-cut victories in all four races.

The novice eight team at 7:39.3, finished only three seconds slower than the second varsity Princeton team rowed in their race, but over 33 seconds ahead of the nearest competitor in its own race, Rutgers, while Columbia finished another eleven seconds behind the Scarlet Knights.

"We have really been focused this year," senior women's open rower Cathy Marsella said. "The general support around the boathouse has been amazing, and that fosters success like we had [on Saturday]."

These wins must be taken with a grain of salt, Marsella went on to say: "We weren't really racing the strongest teams. Rutgers doesn't exactly have a strong rowing tradition, [compared to] the mentality of greatness at Princeton."

The men's heavyweight teams notched dominating wins on Saturday morning. All three varsity boats were at least six seconds faster than the Rutgers boats. In fact, the Scarlet Knights' second varsity eight went a full 10 seconds faster than their first team.

In the heavyweight novice races, the Tigers won by over 12 seconds in each of their two races against Rutgers.

"This really gave the team a lot of momentum going into next week," McCormick said.

If next weekend is anything like this one, the Tigers may start collecting brooms, and, at the end of the season, they will be able to trade those in for trophies.