Spring Break has been and gone and the 2023 American collegiate rowing scene is getting into swing, and this year JRN will, for the first time, review every week of the U.S. collegiate rowing summer season, including both the men’s and women’s top-tier. We’ll bring you a summary of the weekend’s action and a look ahead to next week’s, right up to the NCAAs for the women and the IRAs for the men.
Though the cold of winter still casts a long shadow in the north of the country and for some programs water time remains a premium, the whole country is ready to go.
Early in the season many coaches are wanting to shake off the cobwebs before their major tests meaning highly ranked matchups are hard to come by. Nonetheless, let’s kick off the first instalment of this series by seeing what we can learn from the local rivalries and margins of victory that can help inform how things will shake up at either National Championships in New Jersey this summer.
NCAA Women’s Division 1
Opening the season for those wanting to return to the National Championships was a local battle out west on the 11th of March as the University of Southern California (USC) took down their local rivals in the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). A five second margin for the Trojans will be good news for a program looking to build on their 15th place ranking where they finished last season.
Cardinal Invite
On the following weekend the focus went to Oak Ridge, Tennessee for the Cardinal Invite on Sunday the 19th. The Yale Bulldogs looked the class of the field here as they posted the fastest time of the weekend as well as putting in the best time in each of the three sessions. Head Coach Will Porter pushed his career win tally in the Varsity Eights beyond 200 in their first race of the season as they look to build on their win in the Second Eight last year into great speed in the top boat this year.Other standout performances at that event came from Duke as they were unbeaten against direct competition and posted the second-best time of the whole weekend while Alabama and Tennessee consistently finished at the right end of the time sheets.
Other standout performances at the event came from Duke, who went unbeaten against direct competitors and posted the second fastest time of the whole weekend, while Alabama and Tennessee consistently finished at the right end of the results across categories.
The Ivy Big 10 Dust Up
This weekend just gone was the start of the top-ranked programs facing each other and again Yale were in the centre of it all. They managed to put almost fifteen seconds into an Ohio State boat that they finished behind at the NCAAs ten months ago.
The other standout performance at the “Dust Up” in Camden, NJ, was Syracuse as they also put an impressive margin on Rutgers who got the better of them at the National Championships last year. Who is the superior of these two crews remains in doubt as we will have to wait another couple of weeks before they line up against one and other.
Brown & Rhode Island at Princeton
Elsewhere, two of the grand finalists from last year opened their respective campaigns against each other at Carnegie Lake for the Class of 1987 Trophy. Princeton got the better of Brown here by just two seconds as the Tigers and the Bears traded victories across the race classes in their dual racing while Rhode Island, defending conference champions in the Atlantic-10 were well off the pace against their Ivy League competition.
IRA Heavyweight Men’s Division 1
Lake Las Vegas Collegiate Invitational
With their smaller numbers and later championships, the men haven’t had quite the length of activity that the women had. The only top-tier racing prior to this weekend was right at the start of March on Lake Las Vegas where defending champions California, Berkeley were the class of the field, taking care of Oregon State, Colgate and Drexel.
Pre-Season Rankings
Since then the Coaches Association have released their pre-season rankings which have allowed us to seen how the industry initially expects the season to play out. #1 California are returning with all nine of the athletes in last year’s boat and are unanimous number one picks. #2 Yale have been chosen ahead of #3 Syracuse, touted to be their closest challengers despite the Orange’s win on the Charles in October.
Week 1 Duals
On the opening weekend of the proper Spring Season it was #5 Brown who came the closest to being upset as they were only able to squeeze out a 1.7 second win over the #11 Boston University Terriers. No such upsets were on show elsewhere as both #6 Washington and #10 Wisconsin did the business on the road against unranked opposition away from the east coast.
But it was in the east where much of the interesting racing was taking place as while #9 Princeton romped away with the victory on home water the battle for second place between #16 Drexel and #20 Temple as the Dragons got the better of their neighbours by less than a second.
Rounding out the weekend was a delayed clash between #7 Northeastern being hosted by #14 Pennsylvania. The Huskies from Boston winning the Burk Cup for the fifth time in a row with a tight margin of less than three seconds which has become typical of this fixture through that time period.
Coming Up Next Weekend
This weekend looks sure to provide some of the highest quality races we’ll see all season. The highlights of this comes at the San Diego Crew Classic. On the women’s side, Texas have needed tiebreakers to beat Stanford in each of the past two NCAA Championships, and they restart their rivalry for the new season here, being joined by two others from last year’s Grand Final in Washington and California.
There is more than just getting one up on their domestic rivals here as National Pride is at stake as a Rowing Canada crew were a late addition to the start lists as they join Britain’s own Oxford Brookes in both the Men’s and Women’s events. The other national champions also start their season earnest on Mission Bay as California, Berkeley’s band of global rowers will fly the flag for the U.S. against Brookes and the Canadians.
The top racing is not restricted to California either as crews also flood to events elsewhere. The Nathan Benderson Park in Florida will host 13 Women’s Division One eights at the Sunshine State Invitational. The event that will draw the most eyes, however, is their new men’s race as three of the top six ranked programs face off with #2 Yale kick off their final year under legendary Head Coach Steve Gladstone against #5 Washington and #6 Brown.
The American collegiate rowing calendar is really ramping up and though there is almost too much to keep track of, JRN will be here to summarise the action and keep you posted all the way.
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