Lightweight Crew has mixed weekend

The final weekend of the Fall season for Penn lightweight crew produced mixed results between the varsity and freshman teams.

While the freshman team performed extremely well at the Head of the Schuylkill on Saturday, the varsity team did not place as well as it had hoped at the Princeton Chase on Sunday.

In the lightweight eights, the varsity A boat finished 16th out of 28 boats with a time of 14:16, almost a full minute behind first place University Tech at Sydney, Australia. The B boat placed 23rd.

The Quakers had a similar letdown in the lightweight fours, in which their highest finish among three boats was 17th.

In both races, the team attributed the mediocre finishes to collisions with other boats during the competition.

"It was a little frustrating because the collisions cost us some valuable time," Penn captain Tevis Jacobs said.

The Red and Blue had gone into the Princeton Chase hoping to gauge their standing with the rest of its league rivals. Instead, the collisions left the Quakers finishing behind many rival teams, including Yale, Princeton and Georgetown.

"When you have accidents like this it's hard to get an accurate read," Penn coach Mike Irwin said.

As much as accidents plagued the varsity team this weekend, the oarsmen know that they will not reoccur anytime soon. Unlike the fall head races in which the boats travel in a loose pattern for three miles, the spring sprints include lanes for each boat and are raced over a much shorter distance.

"Sprint racing involves a much tighter formation and minimizes the chances for accidents," Irwin said.

On a more auspicious note, the freshman lightweight crew team exceeded all expectations at the Head of the Schuylkill Regatta last Saturday.

The freshman boat placed seventh out of a field of 56 boats, with a time of 14:14.

Surprisingly, the Quakers finished ahead of several professional boat clubs as well as many heavyweight teams. The Princeton heavyweights took first with a time of 12:50.

More importantly, the only lightweight team to finish ahead of the Quakers was Navy, which finished fourth with a time of 13:48.

"I'm very pleased that we came in the top-10 among heavyweight teams," freshman coach John Fife said. "Our performance gave us a good idea of where we stand."

The varsity team will take a week off before beginning its winter training program to prepare for the spring season. Penn must complete its 33-day rest period mandated by the Ivy League before the season starts again in March.

Even though the break between the fall and spring season spans several months, both oarsmen and coaches feel that the long training period will serve as a boon to the beleaguered squad.

"We're all very happy that the break is a long time," Jacobs said. "It gives us an opportunity to work on our conditioning."

The freshman team will take a short break from racing before culminating its season at the Belly of the Carnegie in Princeton, N.J., on Nov. 10th.

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