W. Crew looks to improve seeding at Sprints

This season Penn women's crew has done an outstanding job facing and beating some of the toughest competition in the country. The Quakers hope the trend continues Saturday on the Schuylkill River. The Quakers take on Princeton, the top-ranked team in their division, the Eastern Association of Women's Rowing Colleges. Also competing in the tri-meet is No. 5 Dartmouth. Penn is No. 7. The race is significant for Penn because it is the last contest before the May 21 Eastern Sprints. As the rankings stand now, Penn would face Princeton and No. 6 Radcliffe in the initial heat. Since only two teams in the initial heat qualify, Penn would not be favored to advance. Should the Quakers beat Dartmouth and move up to No. 5, they would face No. 2 Brown and No. 8 Wisconsin. The Red and Blue beat the Badgers earlier this year at the San Diego Classic. To improve their ranking, the Quakers will have to beat a Dartmouth crew that beat them by six seconds at the San Diego Classic. "They are getting better and better," Penn coach Carol Bower said about the Big Green. "They are a young crew that is suprisingly fast." Although Penn lost to Dartmouth by six seconds, the Quakers made up five seconds when they raced Cornell for the second time last weekend. The thinking behind Penn's optimism is that if it can make up for its poor start in San Diego, it will have a good chance to beat Dartmouth. Penn has not seen Princeton this spring. However, in the Head of Charles races in the fall, the Tigers beat the Quakers handily. The race will present crews of contrasting styles. While Penn is a light crew that relies on a high stroke rate, both Princeton and Dartmouth are strong crews that rely on getting more on each stroke. To succeed tomorrow, the Quakers must correct a problem that has haunted them at various times this spring -- getting off to a poor start. To combat that, Bower has put her crew through a tough week of practices. "We've really cleaned up the start," Bower said. "I think a big part of the problem was the bad weather and the rough water. We're not trying to do anything different. We're just trying to do it right."