"The best performance of the century": A look into Penn heavyweight rowing's season

Penn’s heavyweight rowing team finished ninth overall at the Intercollegiate Rowing Association National Championship Regatta with 188 total points.

Despite not making the A final in the IRA championship, the team celebrated their significant progress and reached a number of goals set both for the weekend and for the season.

The team entered the IRA championship last weekend having made significant strides. At the Eastern Sprints the previous weekend, the varsity boat made the A final and entered the national championship ranked seventh, which had not happened for two decades. The 4V and 5V boats were also in the A final, and the 2V and 3V boats were in the B final.

Then, in the IRA championship, the 2V boat placed third and the Varsity boat placed second in the B final. 

According to rising senior Charles Jones, a member of the Varsity boat, these results were bittersweet. A team goal set at the beginning of the season was to completely avoid the C final, where boats of previous seasons had often placed. This was accomplished successfully, though no boats were able to make the A final due to a narrow upset by Syracuse in the semifinals. 

“We didn’t really know their speed,” rising junior Cole Riedinger said, another member of the Varsity boat. 

“I’d be lying if we didn’t wish that we had those last two seconds against Syracuse in the semifinal … but it’s not from lack of effort. I’m going to be scratching my head for the next three months figuring out how I let those two seconds go for sure,” said head coach Al Monte. 

Throughout the season, Penn encountered Northeastern’s heavyweight crew team numerous times, starting with a loss to the Huskies by 2.8 seconds at the season’s first competition, the shared Burk Cup. 

At the Eastern Sprints, however, Penn found success against the team hailing from Boston. The regatta resulted in a nail-biting Quaker victory by 0.2 seconds prior to a dominating victory over the Huskies, winning by 5.5 seconds.

The teams continued to compete in the IRA championship. In the second heat, Penn achieved a victory of 0.6 seconds over the Huskies, and then in the AB semifinals, won by 0.3 seconds. 

The number of times these two teams faced off, especially at the end of the season, was very uncommon according to Jones, but it proved to be an exciting rivalry.

“It really showed how consistent as a crew we are and how consistent as a crew they are. [I] have a lot of respect for those guys,” said Jones. 

Riedinger shared a similar sentiment, commenting on the razor-sharp margins of these races: “Both teams showed a lot of resilience, and both teams were really operating at their highest level. That margin could have swayed any way.”

Though the team did not make the A final, coaches and players alike agree that the progress throughout the season was undeniable. 

Another goal set by the team for this year was to win a race, according to Jones. This, however, is more challenging of a goal than it may seem. 

“We have one of the hardest, if not the hardest regular season[s] in the country, and our schedules don’t change,” explained Jones. 

This permits Penn’s crew team to be consistently ranked in the top 10 nationally while still losing race after race. Penn faced two teams ranked number one nationally this season in Harvard and Princeton. 

The team aimed to win two races this year but came up short. The lone victory came against Cornell — the end of a six-year drought. However, the margins of the season’s losses closed significantly. 

“Every single crew that we raced came off the water and had more respect for us then they had in years past because typically, we don’t compete with them,” said Jones. 

A metric used to measure growth was Penn’s progress against California’s rowing team. At the IRA championship in 2023, Penn fell to Cal by 32 seconds. This year, that gap shrank to 5.5. 

“The fact that we as a squad have developed as much as we have, making up 27 seconds in a year, is pretty incredible,” Jones said. 

Monte views the progression and trajectory of Penn’s heavyweight crew team in a longer time frame. In his second year with the team, he has observed team development in terms of physical success and maturity. 

In Monte’s first year with the team, he focused on introducing the rowers to the elite level of speed required to compete in the upper echelons of the sport, the work required to get there, and the vision he had going forward. He left it up to the team to embrace it — and they did. 

The Quakers began “touching elite speeds last year, rowing … alongside the country’s best teams,” Monte said. 

Understanding that they could compete at that level resulted in a huge shift, and the team produced visible results, winning Most Improved Crew at the IRA championship in 2023.

“There were no more question marks about the process,” Monte said. 

The team aimed to win Most Improved for a second consecutive year — a goal never achieved in the IRA championship before. 

Though they did fall short, they used this goal as a “rallying cry” throughout this year, helping them jump from 11th to ninth place nationally, Monte said. 

Notably, the team has consisted of all the same members over the past two years, and of the top 24 varsity rowers, only one will graduate this year. All eight varsity horsemen will return for the 2024-25 season. 

“This is really encouraging, both for the freshmen coming in but also for the remaining guys with lots of chemistry,” Riedinger said. The continuity of the team has allowed for the momentum of the progress to build successfully. 

Rowing is a sport that requires “copious amounts of age and experience,” Jones noted. 

This progress can particularly be observed through physical consistency and fitness improvements. According to Riedinger, around 80% of the team saw individual major personal records on the ergometer in the fitness training that occurred over the winter. 

“I have rarely seen [this] … that is really phenomenal,” Riedinger commented. “Not only are we improving ourselves, but that will definitely aid in improving boat speed.” 

Aside from physical strides, Riedinger also notes culture as a point of pride when reflecting on his team. The team consistently maintains a “lighthearted, fun, but serious manner.”

“We’re not too serious with ourselves … It's not a team that boasts about our victories all the time. It's a team that's very humble, and that understands where we’ve been and hopefully where we’ll be,” said Riedinger. 

And the team really does know where they have been, making recent success even more meaningful. 

Jones shared that the storied program has struggled significantly over the past two decades, but after last year’s strides, “everyone was cheering super hard for us” again. 

Jones described this group as a “Cinderella team,” and commented on how exciting it was to feel the energy of their success. 

He also points to Penn having the only top 10 team in which every single rower in the top two boats is American — which is very unique for an IRA team — as a reason for the increased buzz around the team this year. 

“[We had] the best performance of the century. The last time the varsity was in the grand final was 99,” said Monte. 

Looking ahead, Monte wants all the varsity boats to be in the A final in future years, and feels that the development of the team indicates that this is absolutely possible on their upward trajectory. 

“This is really a learning lab for them. This is just an extension of their education at Penn, and they’re learning real lessons, not just about how to make boats go fast but perseverance, how to overcome obstacles, how to work together,” Monte said.