GU Crew Looks to Finish Season at Top of Nation
Republished from The Hoya, May 4, 2004
By Michael Grendell, Hoya Staff Writer
Countless early mornings spent toiling on ergometers and dipping their oars in the Potomac have begun to yield results for the Georgetown men’s and women’s crew teams. With both lightweight squads ranked in the top five nationally, the Hoyas have set the bar high this spring season and look to punctuate their success with strong showings at the Eastern Sprints and the Intercollegiate Rowing Association Regatta (IRA).
The women’s lightweight varsity squad edged the No. 3 Wisconsin team by 0.6 seconds over the weekend. Racing on the Potomac on Saturday in light winds, the Hoyas clocked 6:28.9 over the 2,000m course while the Badgers finished in 6:29.5. The varsity four and the two novice boats all lost in the duel meet.
The lightweight eight finished fourth in the Knecht Cup in Camden, N.J., behind Princeton, Radcliffe and Wisconsin, the top three programs in the nation. The varsity four took the runner-up spot in its event.
“They’ve had some very close races, some where they’ve been behind and yet have kept themselves in the race and have gotten back into the race,” women’s Head Coach Jimmy King said. “That’s really the key to their success, as well as the depth of the program.”
Next weekend’s Eastern Sprints in Camden, N.J., will provide the Hoyas with a chance to take on their top rivals one more time. In the latest USRowing poll, the Georgetown women’s lightweight crew was ranked fourth, behind Radcliffe, Princeton and Wisconsin. Now that Georgetown has proved it can beat Wisconsin, it has a mental advantage going into the race.
“That gives this squad a huge boost for Eastern Sprints this weekend,” King said. “Racing is always very tight, very competitive at Sprints. So it becomes more a matter of who’s on that day.”
The other half of the varsity women’s team, the openweight eight, cannot claim the same measure of success as its companion boat. Despite performing well in the first heats at the Big East Challenge on April 25, the Hoyas struggled later. The eight ended up third in the petite final and eighth out of the eight competitors. Two weeks earlier the team had finished at the bottom of the petite finals at the George Washington Invitational.
“I think this year, with the heavyweights, it’s more of a learning process, just trying to learn to row well and to perform consistently. We’re trying to develop that consistency. Not only week to week, but in the regatta, race to race,” King said.
The novice openweights, however, have managed to succeed this season. Their best races this spring have come in the Big East Challenge, where the novice eight won the grand final with a time of 7:18.8, over seven seconds ahead of Miami, the runner up. The second novice eight also won its race, defeating two opponents. The two boats helped launch Georgetown into fifth place with 73 points, one point behind Rutgers. The novice team, which also won its event at the George Washington Invitational, holds much potential that the coaches hope will develop on the varsity squad later.
“What we need is a core of students to set some long-term goals. That’s something we’re already talking to this year’s freshmen about because we think that there’s a core of rowers there that if they stick together, they can help push the program forward and help us start on that upward trend for the next couple of years,” King said.
The men’s heavyweight and lightweight teams have both landed in the polls despite sometimes-uneven performances. While the men are the third highest vote-getters outside the top 20 listed in the USRowing poll, the team has not always met its expectations. A strong performance against Yale, ranked 10th, may mark improvement. The men’s varsity heavyweight eight finished the course in 5:54.2, just 2.5 seconds behind Yale.
“I think that the most noticeable thing about the heavyweights has been that, for one reason or another, we have not had a lot of performances that we thought were good ones,” men’s Head Coach Tony Johnson said. “In the race at Yale, I thought the guys had done a good job, that they raced well and improved. Yale is a step forward in the right direction.”
The previous weekend’s race, against No. 18 Syracuse and No. 14 Temple, was more trying as Georgetown lost to both squads by almost 17 seconds.
Since winning the Jesuit Invitational in late March, the heavyweight eight has struggled in duel competitions. Eastern Sprints, which fall on May 16 in Worcester, Mass., offer the team a chance to cap the season off with its best performance this year.
“I had hoped we would have improved from where we were a year ago, but we are performing about the same. It’s a little disappointing, but not shocking,” Johnson said. “We have made some pretty significant improvements since the fall, and we still have a lot of time until IRAs.”
If the heavyweight team has had trouble winning events, the lightweight has not suffered the same fate. Ranked No. 5, the team has posted wins over No. 6 Princeton, No. 10 Boston College and No. 12 Pennsylvania in duel meets.
On April 24, the Hoyas eked out a victory over the Tigers by a 0.4 second margin. The lightweight eight will focus on staying up with the other top programs at Eastern Sprints, including the four teams ranked higher than them: Navy, Harvard, Cornell and Yale. So far this season, Navy and Harvard have finished better than Georgetown in head-to-head competition.
“I think the lightweights have done well. They had to replace some key seniors, but have been very consistent and have shown great poise,” Johnson said.
Eastern Sprints is the championships of the Eastern Association of Rowing Colleges. The IRA regatta is the nation’s oldest rowing championship, dating back to 1895. They will take place from June 3-5 in Camden, N.J. The men’s heavyweight and lightweight squads are scheduled to compete there, as is the women’s lightweight team.
