Lake Mercer near Princeton, New Jersey played host to the 122nd running of the Intercollegiate Rowing Association’s National Championship. This weekend, four national championships were crowned in uncharacteristically great conditions with eight further events held in lower boats. Held across three days of heats, semis, and finals – it was all on the line for some of the fastest crews on the planet.
While the first day’s heats went largely as expected, there was a big shock in Saturday’s first semi final as Washington, Brown, Princeton and Yale were pitted against each other with only three able to progress into the Grand Final and contest for the national championships. As was the case at the Eastern Sprints two weeks ago, the Yale Bulldogs jumped out to an early lead as they, Princeton and Washington elevated themselves above the rest of the field. The Brown Bears had relied on a killer sprint at the conference championship but when coxswain Jack DiGiovanni made the call, they were unable to make any inroads, finishing almost a length away from advancing. They would have to settle for a spot in the Petite Final, which they would win by several lengths.
On finals day, it was all about the Washington Huskies who, after collecting the spoils on Saturday in the coxed four, opened their Sunday racing with a course record in the third Varsity Eights, beating a time from several years ago despite fairly neutral conditions.
In the second Varsity Eight, the Huskies jumped out to an early lead, establishing open water on the remainder of the field within a few hundred metres and sitting on that lead all the way down the course. Princeton managed to cling onto their coattails to claim the silver medal while Dartmouth in lane six held off the charging California crew for bronze.
In the Varsity Eights, there was no such early domination. Off the line, a leading pack of four boats – Harvard, Yale, Washington and California – established themselves at the front of the field. But the dual forces of Harvard and Washington were able to last the longest through the body of the piece, elevating themselves above the rest with Washington gaining in excess of half a length on the Crimson. A move with around 500m to go from Harvard evoked memories of the season opener in Sarasota but Washington had the afterburners to pull away to a two-thirds-of-a-length victory to complete the set of all four heavyweight events, replicating the achievement of their rivals from California twelve months ago.
Yale paid for their strong start and fell back, leaving California to claim bronze and Princeton recovered from a slow opening to overhaul the Bulldogs for fourth, with Syracuse rounding out the field.
In the lower finals, Penn capped off a great season finishing eighth overall, Boston University finally broke into the top ten which has been unbreakable in the polls all season. Drexel got the better of La Salle in their sixth meeting of the year to claim sixteenth and MIT outperformed expectations but narrowly missed out on the top twenty.
In the fours, the story to watch was FIT who won a bronze medal, just 15 months after they needed a court order to restore their programme to Varsity status.
For the lightweight men, there was another key story as two years on from missing qualification, Harvard picked up the spoils in both of the eights events while Georgetown’s top four athletes will be taking home the gold medals in the coxed four. Despite strong performances across the board from Penn, they didn’t score enough points to keep the IRA President’s Cup from going to Cambridge for the year.
On the lightweight women’s side, Princeton had too much speed for anyone to stop them going four-in-a-row in the varsity eight, with the most intriguing racing coming from Stanford as they won their battle with Harvardfor silver. In the lower boats, there was more diversity than last year with Stanford coming victorious in the four while Boston University picked up the double. Strong results in both of these events allowed Princeton to defend the IRA Commissioner’s Cup for the points standings by a singular point over their west-coast rivals from Stanford.
In the Division Three boats, Wesleyan came out on top. Their first victory in this young event, the boys from Middletown, Connecticut broke the run of victories belonging to their neighbours to the north, Williams College who finished just 0.2 seconds away from gold. In the second eight, Tufts took the glory, making this the first year where no one did the double. The closeness of these two events lead to a three-way tie at the top of the points standings But, by virtue of holding the tiebreaker, the Wesleyan boys ensured they would be taking home the points trophy.
For many of these programmes, this marks the end of the season as their athletes will return home for the summer. But for a few, there is post season racing on the horizon. Keep your eyes peeled as some will travel across the pond for the Henley Royal Regatta while others will be lining up in their national team colours at the U23 world championships in Canada.
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