While members of the men's crew teams will use this weekend to rest and get started on their Dean's Date papers, the women's teams will be hard at work.
Both the open and lightweight women's teams head off to Cooper River in Camden to race in the Eastern Association of Women's Rowing Colleges Sprints Championship. Aside from the Sprints Championship, an invitation to the NCAA Championships is on the line for both teams. NCAAs will take place later in the month.
Women's open crew took seventh place overall at NCAAs last season, but is in no way guaranteed a trip back to the championship this year. The Tigers will face up against the best crews on the East Coast this weekend. All of the Ivy League schools will be at Cooper River, as well as MIT, Georgetown, Boston University, Boston College, Wisconsin, Northeastern, Rutgers, and Syracuse.
The races begin in the morning with qualifying rounds. Each race has three heats with four boats competing. The finals, as well as races determining lower rankings, are run in the afternoon.
The open weight women are entering Easterns undefeated in the Ivy League, and on a 10-race winning streak. Even so, many of the Tigers' wins this season were close races and they do not expect an easy day.
They will race against Dartmouth, Syracuse, Boston, and Penn in the qualifying round, all teams that Princeton has beaten handily in the past.
Head coach Lori Dauphiny is not making any assumptions. "The Eastern Sprints Championship is always a challenge," she said. "The racing will be extremely competitive. Some of the top crews in the country are in our league."
As for which teams in particular the Tigers are gunning for, the same names come to everyone's minds. Radcliffe, the defending national champion, will be looking to hold onto its title. The Tigers raced the Crimson early in April, winning by two seconds. In women's crew, three to four seconds usually constitutes a boat length so this was a solid, but not dominating lead.
Dauphiny also included Yale and Brown in her list of teams to beat in the Varsity Eight event, being careful to mention that you can't count anyone out.
The Tigers faced Brown in the first race of their season. It was a close matchup then, and, given the way both teams have improved over the season, it should be one to watch this coming weekend.
Yale nearly stole the Eisenberg Cup from the Tigers on Lake Carnegie back on April 17. The teams split four races that day, but Princeton won the final running to take the cup. The Varsity Eight won the decisive race by more than three seconds, or about an entire boat length.
The women's novice boat also enters the Sprints undefeated after a dominating regular season. The Tigers need a win to qualify for the NCAA Championships, an amazing feat for a team that includes women that had never rowed before coming to Princeton. The team will race against Penn, Northeastern, Dartmouth, and Rutgers in the qualifying round.
Women's lightweight crew, the defending national champion, enters the weekend with a strong current of momentum behind it and near-perfect record on the regular season.
Once again, the team's most dangerous rival is Radcliffe. The Tigers lost to the Crimson late in April by a narrow margin of just over one second. Princeton had taken down Radcliffe only one week earlier, when they won their second Knecht Cup in a row. This weekend promises to be a similarly close race.
The lightweight women do not compete in a qualifying round, and will race against Radcliffe, Wisconsin, and Georgetown in their final and only race. Wisconsin came in right behind Princeton and Radcliffe at the Knecht Cup and is a definite competitor for the invitation to the NCAAs.
The men's heavyweight and lightweight teams will be training this weekend at home for their own Sprints Championships on the 16th. Many of them will travel to Cooper River to cheer the women in their quest for victory.
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