Lwt. Crew has worst loss of the year

Quakers lose toQuakers lose toColumbia and YaleQuakers lose toColumbia and Yaleby 24 seconds With three members missing from the Penn lightweight varsity boat at last weekend's race against Yale and Columbia, the crew lost by its largest margin of the season so far -- 24 seconds. "Towards the end, they just fell apart," Penn coach Bruce Konopka said. "I'm sure they were disappointed, but they did a good job." The Quakers hope that the varsity's loss will not affect Penn's current No. 8 ranking in the East. If the Eastern crew coaches that vote on the rankings take into consideration that the Quakers were without their usual lineup this weekend, Penn may hold onto to its No. 8 spot. The varsity's time of 6 minutes, 18 seconds was well below what it usually registers for 2,000 meters. "Overall, it was pretty disappointing,"Quakers junior Demetrios Tsipras said. "We definitely didn't row as well as we could have." The mixed lineup of varsity and junior varsity members certainly was a factor, but this week the crews will be back to normal and ready to hit the water for hard training. "Now that everyone's back together, we're looking to really get in some good time before [Eastern] Sprints," Tsipras said. The first freshmen crew suffered its first lost of the season to Yale, which won by three seconds. "That's a kind of margin we can make up in the next few weeks," Konopka said. "They rowed a hard race but weren't particularly satisfied." The second freshmen boat had its best race of the season. Despite losing by five seconds to the Elis, the second freshmen crew showed great improvement. "They did a really great job," Konopka said. "We haven't had such a good second freshman crew in a while." Although the Quakers lightweights have not had as much success as they would have liked, they realize that nothing matters until Sprints. "We just want to show up for Sprints and do the best we can," Penn sophomore T.J. Berdzik said. With one race left against No. 1 Princeton next weekend, the Quakers will have two weeks to get into top shape before Sprints.