It paid to be on the men's heavyweight or women's open crew team this past weekend. Both came through with stunning victories over dominant opponents. The lightweights were not able to follow suit, and both ended the weekend with disappointing losses.
The open team — ranked No. 1 in the Eastern College Athletic Conference — won the race of a lifetime against three strong teams. They faced Virginia, No. 11 Penn and No. 12 Dartmouth on their home course racing into one of the strongest head winds these teams have seen all year.
The Tigers went out strong in the beginning, quickly taking a boat's length lead. Soon after, however, a sophomore on the team caught a crab, a usually devastating technical mistake that throws off the rhythm of the entire boat. Virginia pulled ahead, and Penn began to regain ground as well.
In spite of this damaging turn of events the women refused to be defeated, and in a feat of superhuman determination and strength they moved up Virginia's boat. They regained their boat's length lead and crossed the finish line in a time of 7:17.3, a full three seconds in front of the Cavaliers. The other competitors were far behind: the Quakers at 7:28.6 and the Big Green at 7:41.8.
With this win the Tigers completed an undefeated season in the Ivy League.
The Tigers open weight novice boat destroyed Dartmouth's boat crossing the line almost twenty seconds in front of them. Virginia was the victor in the rest of the match ups of the day, winning both the 2nd Varsity and Varsity 4 races.
The No. 2-ranked men's heavy weight team traveled to Lake Housatonic in Connecticut to try to lay claim to the Carnegie Cup. Also competing were No. 7 Yale and No. 8 Cornell, both teams with impressive race histories this season.
Princeton won the Varsity 8 race, and the Carnegie Cup, by a narrow 1.4 second lead over Cornell, crossing with a time of 5:31.6. Yale followed a fair distance behind finishing in 5:37.2.
The Tigers had a similarly close win in the novice race, finishing in 5:49.0, just over a second in front of Yale.
Cornell and Yale each won one varsity race apiece — the Big Red won the 2nd Varsity race, and the Bulldogs won the 3rd.
The lightweight men did not fare as well in their home race, in which they faced the same dominating head wind the women open weights were able to overcome. The No. 6 Tiger Varsity boat lost by a tormenting 0.4 seconds to the No. 5 Georgetown boat. The race was tight the entire time, and cannot be considered a disappointing outcome for the Tigers.
"I thought we had a gutsy row," head coach Joe Murtaugh said. "There were never more than two or three seats separating the boats, Georgetown was just able to get their nose over the finish line first. This race represents a step up for us."
The Tigers won the 2nd Varsity 8 race, and came in a close second to Penn in the novice race.
In a final weekend upset the Tigers' women's lightweight team, the defending national champions, lost to No. 2 Radcliffe on the Charles River. The loss came as a slight surprise since the Tigers have already faced, and beaten, Radcliffe twice this season. Fortunately they will get another chance to face them at the upcoming sprint championships.
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