Men's, women's boats to compete at Eastern Sprints this weekend

League and regional pride will be on the line this weekend when the Princeton crews compete against familiar Ivy and Eastern College Athletic Conference foes at Eastern Sprints. Two of the Tiger teams — men's heavyweight and women's open crew — have titles to defend, while the men's and women's lightweight teams hope to redeem themselves after last year's disappointing finishes. The women's races will be taking place close to home in Camden, N.J., while the men's teams will travel north to Worcester, Mass.

None of the teams in any of the fields are favored heavily to run away with the championships. The season has been filled with surprising victories and defeats for every team that has entered Sprints, and no clear favorite has emerged. It will be up to Princeton to assert itself and roar past the other boats this weekend.

The men's heavyweight crew started the season on pace to finish undefeated, but fell to Harvard, Yale and Brown in its last three weekends of regular season competition.

The heavyweights posted a season-best time of five minutes, 50 seconds in their final race, however, and will look to capitalize on this momentum to improve on their time at Sprints. At any rate, it's expected to come down to familiar Ivy foes in the finals, as Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Brown are expected to finish first through fourth respectively.

Men's lightweight competition is just as fierce, with the team hoping to return to the grand final this year. Like the heavyweights, the lightweight team started off strong with victories over powerhouses Navy and Georgetown.

More recently, it suffered disappointing losses to Cornell and Harvard, causing the team to slip in the Eastern Sprints' seedings to fifth, behind Harvard, Dartmouth, Cornell and Georgetown. Despite its lower ranking, the men's lightweight crew remains confident that it will pull out the victory.

"We have had our ups and downs this season, but I think that our training has been going really well since HYPs," junior lightweight Brian Freniere said. "I think one of our greatest strengths is our experience throughout the varsity team. Our sophomores were Sprints Freshmen Champions last year, so they know what it takes to win."

The women's open crew has had its share of ups and downs this season after losing several key members of last year's championship boat to graduation. Going into the weekend, Yale is seeded first, with Radcliffe, Brown and Princeton following. While Yale might appear to be on top now, the Tigers are taking solace in the fact that the tough Bulldog team defeated them by less than two seconds several weeks ago.

"In the varsity eight, the league is exceedingly tight," senior open Carrie Kruse said. "We lost to Brown by seven seconds, then to Yale by one and a half seconds, and then recently Yale beat Brown by a little bit. On paper, anyone could come out on top."

The women's lightweight crew seems to be having the best season of all the Princeton crews, ending the regular season with a perfect record of 7-0. The highlight of its season came just a few weekends ago when the team blitzed past Radcliffe to defeat last year's Sprints runner-up by more than 10 seconds. Last year the Tigers finished a disappointing fourth, but they hope to capitalize on the experience of the upperclassmen to bring home the trophy this weekend. Princeton is joined by another undefeated crew, Wisco, in the five-team field. Based on regular season times, it should be a photo-finish between these two teams.

All the Princeton teams are confident heading into Sprints and believe their preparation will place them in good stead.

"We've been really focused in practice and demanding 100 percent commitment from everyone on the team," Kruse said. "This past week is one of the hardest training weeks that we have in our season, and this year is no exception. We've definitely been putting in the work to reach our goals."