After a weekend where much of the results followed the predictions, we are headed to a weekend full of rivalry matchups as grudge matches will reign from coast to coast, plus the first team will secure their ticket to the IRA National Championships in June.
Coaches Poll
On the men’s side, Dartmouth rise to ninth place after running Yale close on a very fast Houstatonic. Drexel are the biggest risers as they jump three spots to sixteen in a very tightly congested part of the rankings.
For the women, there seemed to be great profit in taking part in the Ivy Invitational as all three of the risers raced on Lake Carnegie this weekend. Brown rose to number five on the back of their strong performances across the squad, Rutgers jumped up two spots and Columbia entered the poll at number twenty.
Week Five Preview
The biggest event of the weekend, at least by number of entrants, is the Big Ten Invitational in Sarasota, Florida. All eight Big Ten rowing programmes will be joined by ten other top Division One programmes to race in a series of four or five wide races on the warm flat water. Of Friday’s racing the most interesting matchup is in the morning session where #5 Brown, #11 Ohio State, #14 Duke, #16 Indiana and UCLA will face off – but the exciting racing comes on Saturday as the big hitters stack up against each other.
The age-old battle of #9 Michigan and #11 Ohio State has the addition of #5 Brown to the mix, while possibly the most important race of the regular season comes when #13 Rutgers, #14 Duke, #15 Tennessee and #16 Indiana battle in what could be critical in determining the last few spots in Bethel, Ohio at the National Championship in June.
The rivalr matchups continue as #3 Princeton, and #6 Yale will face an all-Ivy battle while the two smaller fish in the state of Washington will have the Snake River as their pond as #19 Washington State host Gonzaga.
But arguably the biggest rivalry in all of Collegiate Rowing is renewed on Redwood Shores as #4 California host #7 Washington in the 47th Women’s Cal/UW dual. On the men’s side, the 112th meeting of the two programmes will allow for comparison between #2 California and #3 Washington and, by extension, the field at the Sarasota Invitational.
This comparison is also afforded to us as #4 Princeton travel to Boston to face #1 Harvard, another one of the sport’s fiercest rivalries as the Ivy League is racing itself with #6 Brown and #9 Dartmouth racing in Rhode Island while #17 Columbia host both #10 Penn and #5 Yale in a three-up clash.
Other important clashes come as #14 Cornell, as the only Ivy left out, are joined by #7 Syracuse and #11 Navy in a fierce EARC clash, while we are treated to a midweek race as #1 Harvard dual with #9 Northeastern on Wednesday morning.
Away from the traditional powers, the first team will punch their ticket to the National Championship as #24 Jacksonville and #25 Colgate line up as favourites for the Southern Intercollegiate Rowing Association crown and the IRA bid that goes along with it.
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