M. Crew gets early test in San Diego

As the members of the Penn men's crew team returned from beautiful San Diego yesterday, they brought with them a case of jetlag and one second- and two fourth-place finishes against many of the nation's top rowing schools. More importantly, though, they brought home an idea of where they stand relative to many of the top teams in the nation. They now also know what they must work on in practice in order to succeed nationally. The Quakers first varsity heavyweight boat finished fourth in the Copley Cup Grand Final with a time of 6:10.91. California destroyed the field with a time of 5:51.1, which put them in front of second-place Washington by a 10-second margin. Yale edged the Quakers by just half a second to take third. The second heavyweight boat also came in fourth. The Quakers rowed a time of 6:44.10 in the JV Grand Final, which was also won by Cal. "We need a lot of work," Penn coach Stan Bergman said. "We had a test and we didn't fail the test, but we didn't do very well." Maybe the Quakers didn't "ace" their test, but there's no denying that it was a tough one. "Cal was very impressive," Bergman said. "Washington was also very good. It's good to go out and race against the best." Commodore Garret Miller was also positive about the trip, while keeping an eye to the most important races of the Red and Blue's season. "We wanted to go out and get good racing experience and that's what we did," Miller said. "Eastern Sprints and the Ivy Championships are still [five] weeks away and the IRAs are eight weeks [away]." The Eastern Sprints and the IRAs are the only two races in which winning and losing really matter for any Penn crew. The Eastern Sprints serve as the championships for the Eastern Association of Rowing Colleges (EARC) -- the Ivy League and other top eastern crews -- while the IRAs serve as the national championships, although Harvard and Yale traditionally do not attend. According to Bergman, the Quakers have to be more effective on the start, which is roughly the first quarter of the 2,000-meter race, and they must be more efficient in rowing. "The work level and commitment and training has been outstanding to this point," Bergman said. The varsity lightweight boat finished second in the Men's Collegiate Lightweight Grand Final with a time of 6:40.38, just under nine seconds behind the winning Yale crew. "It's an improvement from the week before," Penn lightweight coach Bruce Konopka said of his team's performance. "Yale's a really good crew and that's the closest we've been to them in a long time. So we're definitely making progress." The Quakers were working on using a lower stroke rating in the race, which means they tried to get more power with each stroke while using fewer strokes per minute. "We would have liked to be a little closer to Yale, within four seconds or so," Konopka said. "We've got good speed and now we're going to work on refining it. That should come as we get more time together in the boat." More time together in the boat is certainly an issue as the lightweight crew sports six underclassmen. "It's tough when you have a lot of young guys," lightweight captain Dan Blaney said. "Varsity competition is a lot tougher than the freshman division. You just have to make fewer mistakes." Despite seeing overall team improvement, Blaney was not completely satisfied with the Quakers' finish. "I was going out there to win. It was a pretty good race on a tough course with the wind, and the water was pretty rough," Blaney said. "There were big improvements, and we were a lot better than last week. It's a young group, and we took a while to come together." Nevertheless, the Quakers were happy with the San Diego trip, which was not all about business. "It was a fun time," Blaney said. "We did a little sightseeing and went to the beach on Sunday."