Crew teams evacuate Quad in Fling's wake

As most of the Penn community will be celebrating the festivities surrounding Spring Fling, the Penn lightweight men's crew team is preparing for one of its biggest races of the season tomorrow against Princeton on the Schuylkill River in the Wood-Hammond Cup. Then the squad will be back again on Sunday to face Georgetown. In addition to the normal pre-race preparations, most of the freshman rowers are leaving the Quad on Friday as the rest of the Penn students, equipment and other Fling preparations are moving in for the weekend. Some of the rowers will be sleeping over in the rooms of their teammates in Hill House and the high rises. Last weekend's regatta at Columbia was disappointing, because the changes the crew had tried to make didn't work. They have begun to race in a new boat and have moved up two members from the junior varsity boat. "We hope that the added week of practice and the lineup switches that were made two weeks ago will start having a noticeable impact," Penn coxswain Justin Slatky said. The lightweight boats face a big challenge tomorrow because Princeton has won the cup the past 16 years, and last year, the Tigers, the reigning Eastern Sprints champions, won the race by more than a 30-second margin on their home course. According to Slatky, Princeton should be a good test of how the changes are affecting the speed of the boat. Racing in their final home regatta of the season, the Quakers hope to use their familiarity with the river to their advantage. "Being on the Schuylkill should be an advantage because the coxswains and rowers know the river better than our opponents," Slatky said. "This enables us to always know exactly how much distance is left in the race, whereas an opponent must estimate how much of the race course is left." Slatky feels that, as in any other race, the boats need to work together as a unit and get in a rhythm early so that they can maintain the tempo throughout the race and finish better than last weekend in New York and last year at Princeton. The Penn women's crew will also be racing this Saturday on the Schyulkill in the Class of '89 Cup against Cornell and Rutgers. The Quakers have not won this race since 1991, when Cornell didn't compete. Since then, the Big Red have won the cup each year. This regatta is also the women's last home race of the season. "We just need to row together," Penn senior Rachel Meucke said. "We need to stay strong through the third 500 [meters] of the race? where we've been tending to fade." The heavyweight men will be on the Harlem River in New York City in the Blackwell Cup, where they will face Columbia and Yale. In a generally close regatta, the Elis have taken the cup the past three years, just ahead of the Quakers. Penn has been practicing the basics in small boats to help its technique because the small boats magnify everything.