Princeton Chase will conclude crew fall season

This Sunday, the Penn crew teams finish out their fall schedules at the Princeton Chase. The chase, which takes place on Lake Carnegie, will start at noon. The Quakers will have all of their boats on the water to compete with Princeton and the rest of the Ivy League crews. The Quakers' fall season, which they consider to be a practice season for the spring, has been very successful thus far. They fared well at the Navy Day Regatta, which was the first event of the year and even better at the second event, the Head of the Schuylkill. The highlight of the second event was when the men's freshman heavyweight team defeated archrival Princeton. In the Navy Regatta, the mens varsity heavyweight team lost to the Midshipmen by the slim margin of four seconds. This is especially impressive since Navy has been in the water practicing specifically for the fall regattas, which are three miles long, since July. The Quakers, on the other hand, did not begin practicing until the beginning of September and focus their training on the spring events which are only two miles long. "These regattas are for training and working together," Penn coach Stan Bergman said. "Our goal is to prepare ourselves as best we can for the spring." Penn is hoping that it is able to prepare itself as well as it did last year, when both the men's lightweight and heavyweight teams made it to the national championship Race. The men's heavyweight team finished in second place in the nationals, after winning the Ivy League and the Eastern title. Penn has most of its personnel returning from last year and hopes that their experience will show. "With continued hard work, we are looking for even greater improvement on last season," Bergman said. "A lot of our success will come from commitment to training and team goals."