As the regular season was wrapping up, a number of top programs are already into their training blocks in preparation for their Conference Championships in two weeks’ time. However, there was still a lot of great racing on show across the country as duals took place on both coasts as well as the Women’s Eastern Sprints at Lake Quinsigamond.
IRA Heavyweight Men’s Division 1
Week 5 Poll
After a great deal of close racing this weekend there was a bit of a shake-up at the top of the rankings. Princeton managed to supplant Syracuse and gain the fourth spot on the ranking after pushing Yale right to the wire. The close racing on the West Coast also lead to some doubts in the previous rankings as California lost the undisputed nature of their number one ranking.
Further down, Penn and Cornell swapped places, with the Quakers rising to number twelve after being only three seconds back from Harvard while the big red fell to fourteenth after being so far off the pace in the Princeton-Yale battle.
Week 6 Duals
In New Jersey, #4 Princeton raced against #10 Brown in the biggest Ivy League matchup of the weekend, with the Tigers coming out on top, but the Brown team will probably be buoyed by the margin as the 3.2 second margin probably presents the most positive result that they’ve seen all month.
In New Hampshire, #6 Dartmouth hosted an invitational on their home water. They will be pleased to have won by as much as 5.9 seconds against #11 Wisconsin but failed to get the victory over #5 Syracuse being 2.5 seconds behind the men from Upstate New York in the afternoon session.
In Boston, #8 Northeastern had a busy weekend racing against #7 Harvard. They finished just 1.4 seconds behind and will be disappointed not to take a scalp Alex Perkins’ men will have been aiming for. They responded very well to this defeat putting a resounding 8.9 second margin into #11 Wisconsin after their travel up and down from Dartmouth the previous day.
On the Schuylkill, the biggest result was #14 Cornell’s 1.9 second upset over #12 Penn, proving that the pollsters were wrong in their downgrading of the Big Red this week.
On the West Coast, #1 California raced against #9 Stanford. The result was largely as expected by the Cardinal managed to keep the margin down to just 4.3 seconds. Stanford have had very little opportunity to prove their speed, but this result will make those on the East Coast sit up and listen as they will look to make the Grand Finals at the National Championships in a month’s time.
NCAA Women’s Division 1
Week 5 Poll
After their upset defeat, Texas was not ranked number one in the country for the first time in 23 months. Instead, taking up their mantle was Princeton who rose three places to take the top spot. The performance from Yale’s lower boats also allowed them to move Stanford down to fourth place, but the uncertainty did lead to one voter ranking the Cardinal at the top of their list.
Last weekend’s other big upset inspired a bit of movement at the bottom as Indiana vaulted up to sixteenth spot from number twenty and while Ohio State’s lower boats shielded them from too humiliating a drop, they still fell behind SMU to number thirteen.
Week 6 Duals
In their first challenge at the top of the rankings, #1 Princeton did the business against #9 Penn, but the margin was smaller than would be expected from a all-conquering program. This margin indicates there is still plenty more excitement to come in this season and maybe as many as half a dozen squads, given the right preparation, could shoot for the National Championships.
Elsewhere on the east coast, #9 Virginia dominated #19 Tennessee by 12.7 seconds as the Volunteers still struggle to find the right balance in their squad as for much of the season so far their first eight has posted slower times than their second eight.
West Coast Invitationals
On Redwood Shores, #4 Stanford and #7 California welcomed Iowa and #12 SMU to the East Coast for a round of racing. Many of the teams will come away with mixed feelings from the proceedings, none more so than Iowa as they managed to keep California within overlap yet lost to SMU and were blown out in the first race of the weekend by Stanford. The west coast teams did a clean sweep of the weekend, both looking firmly towards Pac-12s in a fortnight’s time.
Also looking forward to Pac-12s will be Oregon State who did very well at their home invitational. In races that were eight boats across they gave strong results, coming away with a victory in the afternoon session over #17 USC as well as beating UCLA in both rounds of racing.
Women’s Sprints
On Lake Quinsigamond on Sunday, the Women’s Eastern Sprints wrapped up the regular season, and #5 Brown will have come away the happiest winning all three NCAA events. Further down the timesheets #20 Columbia continued on their run of positive momentum as they upset #15 Harvard in both the Varsity Eight and the team event overall coming away with narrow victories on both counts as they look to bolster their campaign for an at-large bid for the national championships. Northeastern will be filled with confidence as they look to earn an automatic qualification berth at their Conference Championships and perhaps put themselves further forward at NCAAs at the end of May.
Coming up Next Weekend
With the regular season all wrapped up, the vast majority of major programs have a bank of training around final exams before the Conference Championships. The most notable of exceptions comes from Washingtonas both their #3 Men’s Team and their #6 Women’s Team will race against crews put up by Rowing Australiaat the Windemere Cup on the Montlake Cut.
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