Hwt. Crew edges Harvard for Adams Cup

The Penn men's heavyweight crew team is picking up speed both literally, with an actual increase in boat speed, and figuratively, in the team's campaign to repeat as Ivy League and Eastern Sprints champions. The Quakers took another step towards the latter as they defeated Harvard and Navy to take the Adams Cup for the first time since 1991. Penn's second varsity eight also won its race on the Schuylkill River last Saturday. The two teams haven't beaten Harvard and Navy in the same race since the last time Penn won the Adams Cup. "It wasn't one of our best races," senior captain Greg Rauscher said. "But we hung in there and fought it out." And quite a fight it was, as the Quakers held off an advancing Crimson crew at the finish line by 98/100ths of a second. Despite the close finish and the fact that Penn had not won the Adams Cup in eight years, Rauscher said the team did not get a huge boost in its already-high confidence level. "We're always going in to win," he said. "We're definitely not surprised that we won. It's just another building block." But Rauscher was quick to add that the team still has a long way to go to successfully defend its Ivy title. "Princeton embarrassed Yale this weekend," he said. "[The win] was great but there's a lot more that we have to do." Princeton appears to be the class of the Ivies heading into Eastern Sprints, which serve as the championships for the Ivy League and other top eastern collegiate crews. On Saturday, the Tigers dismantled the Elis by an enormous 16-second margin. Penn has already competed against both Yale and Princeton this season. The Quakers defeated the Elis by three seconds for their first cup win of the season two weeks ago, while they lost to the Tigers by seven seconds on April 10. Despite Princeton's dominance to this point, both Rauscher and Penn coach Stan Bergman remain unfazed. "We've gone into races where crews seem invincible and we've won," Bergman said. "Like last year, we went into Sprints not having won a cup race and we won the whole thing." "[Princeton] is by far the biggest challenge in the race," Rauscher said. "Not to discount Harvard or Yale, but Princeton is really fast right now. We're going to throw everything we've got at them and I don't think that any guy will be able to say that he has anything left after that race." Historically, the Quakers seem to have a knack for peaking at the right time. "Penn crews have always had their best performances at Sprints," Rauscher said. According to Bergman, peaking at Sprints is hardly an accident. "We always like to feel we're at our fastest for Eastern Sprints," Bergman said. "And I think this crew's getting better every week."