Always an overshadowed program, at least in comparison to its lightweight brethren, the women's open weight crew team has certainly caught the attention of crew aficionados this season.
The women have gotten off to one of the best starts in program history, posting impressive wins against, among others, Brown, Michigan, and Yale. With only one loss, the open weight women look to continue their winning ways this weekend against Penn and Dartmouth.
The Tigers enter this weekend's race after a close win last Saturday over Yale, a team both Penn and the Big Green lost to earlier in the season. Each of Princeton's competitors is coming off a loss last weekend — the Quakers fell to Cornell, who the Tigers have already defeated, and Dartmouth placed third against Harvard/Radcliffe and Syracuse.
Princeton is optimistic about its chances this weekend, but the Tigers know they still need to be at their best against these two teams.
"Penn and Dartmouth have never failed to challenge the Princeton program, and I don't expect this year to be any different," senior co-captain Sasha Suda said. "The team is fired up and ready to go."
Though Yale's river course last weekend didn't faze the Tigers, the Quaker course on the Schuylkill River means Princeton will need to adjust to conditions different from what they are accustomed to. The Tigers practice and host races on the calmer waters of Lake Carnegie.
"[The river course] will require our coxswain to be sharp in order to steer the best course," open weight coach Lori Dauphiny said.
The lightweight women do not compete officially this weekend, but some rowers, mostly novice, will travel to Boston to race Radcliffe. At the top of the team's agenda, however, is preparing for the Eastern Association of Women's Rowing Colleges (EAWRC) Sprints on May 19.
"For now, we are looking forward to Sprints," senior captain Laurie Dean said. "This will be the culmination of our season."
If these Princeton teams can continue to do as well in the latter half of their season as they did in the beginning, there's no telling what they might accomplish.
The heavyweight men compete against Cornell and Yale in Ithaca, N.Y., this weekend.
In the most recent US Rowing Collegiate Men's Varsity Eight Poll, Cornell was ranked at No. 6, with the Tigers trailing just a spot behind and Yale ranked at No. 9. This gives a sense of the parity of the schools' top boats.
The Tigers are coming off a debilitating defeat by Harvard last weekend. In that race, then-ranked No. 4 Harvard defeated the Tigers' top varsity boat by just over 13 seconds, reclaiming the Compton Cup.
Looking to prove that their early season success against the likes of Navy, Penn and Columbia was no fluke, the heavyweight men will enter this weekend's race better prepared and certainly hungrier.
Cornell, the host of Saturday's race, is in the midst of a successful season. Despite handing over the Goes Trophy to Navy last weekend, falling to the Midshipmen by just 1.7 seconds, the Big Red have earned big wins this spring against three of the nation's elite programs — Rutgers, Georgetown, and Michigan.
Yale, Princeton's eternal rival, is boasting an equally impressive spring season. Last weekend, the heavyweights captured the Blackwell Cup, downing Penn and Columbia. The top varsity boat features Andrew Brennan, who took second place in the annual Crash-B Indoor World Rowing Championships in late February. Brennan and the Elis squad will be looking to dethrone Princeton's heavyweights, though with the sour taste of defeat still lingering in their mouths after last weekend, the heavyweight will not go down without a fight.
In a rematch of last season's unnerving loss to Yale in the men's lightweight first varsity race at the Goldthwait Cup, Princeton's men's lightweight crew team races Yale and Harvard this Saturday in New Haven, Conn.
In last year's race, held in early-May, the Tigers placed second in the Varsity Eight, four seconds behind the Elis who finished in a time of 6:28.6. Harvard finished last.
Yale has captured the last three Goldthwait Cup's, with Princeton winning in 1998 and '99. A new trophy, the Vogel Cup, will be awarded this year to the team with five-boat supremacy.
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