San Diego may have been a pleasant respite from the dreary weekend weather in Philadelphia, but men's heavyweight coach Fred Honebein hopes that his team is "pissed off" after its trip out West.
The team struggled, finishing 10th overall in the San Diego Crew Classic.
"We didn't achieve the results we were anticipating," Honebein said. "That being said, the one thing we did get out of it was we got to see the speed of the top teams in the league."
The Varsity 8 finished 10th (out of 13) overall in the Copley Cup yesterday, winning third place in the petite final with a time of 6:00.25. On Saturday it had qualified for the final with a 10th place finish in preliminaries.
"What we have done in practice has been really good," Honebein said. "Considering our team is fairly young, I think our abilities will improve as we get more experience on the race course."
With a time of 5:39.90, Washington captured a first-place victory. Penn defeated Purdue, Colgate and host UC San Diego.
"There is only one team that is really happy right now out of 13 in varsity and 26 in the freshman races," Honebein said.
"We can walk away and sulk and be disappointed or we can reload and keep going back. That is going to be the sign of what kind of team we are."
The Freshman 8 took part in the Derek Guelker Memorial Cup, in which they took fifth place. The Red and Blue finished with a time of 6:30.07, roughly 30 seconds behind leader Washington.
Although the Quakers had a tough weekend, they are not giving up.
"The goals have always been the same and they wont change," Honebein said. "Our goal is to execute a flawless race plan and to come off the water having executed what we have done in practice."
With this in mind, the team is hopeful that it will come out on top - over Ivy foes Princeton and Columbia - in next weekend's Child's Cup.
"I think this weekend . will make them focus and hungry to improve and move on week to week and have focus for the rest of the year," Honebein said.
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