Season Preview: W. Crew excited for new season

With a host of improved erg scores, the Quakers are ready for the Navy Day Regatta. It's time once again for women's fall rowing. Penn's first race of the season, the Navy Day Regatta, will take place this Saturday on the Schuylkill River. As the race's name implies, Penn will be competing against Navy and various other crews from around the area. The Quakers are certainly showing signs of promise thus far. "We've been doing a lot of conditioning work and recent testing is showing that everyone is improving with their training," Penn coach Barb Kirch said. "We've had three people do their best [ergometer] scores ever and it's only the beginning of the year. A good portion of the team is sophomores and they are doing testing they haven't done before and doing well." The Quakers rowers share their coach's enthusiasm. "We have our first race this weekend and we're very excited," co-captain Loren Berman said. Berman also noted that the crew will be strengthened by the fact that the upperclassmen have benefitted from having the stability of having been coached by Kirch for the past three years. When Kirch took over the coaching duties at Penn in 1997, she marked the third coach for the Quakers in three seasons. A 1984 Penn graduate, Kirch rowed in two Olympic games -- she is one of 49 athletes and coaches in Penn rowing history to have participated in the Olympics -- before helping Dartmouth build one of the top women's rowing programs in the Ivy League. However, the team still has a lot to overcome in its quest to beat its Ivy rivals. "We've had a lot of injuries amongst the team," sophomore Victoria Kilner said. "[The rowers'] hands are getting chopped up from blisters and stuff." However, Kilner also emphasized the team's improved erg scores, adding that most of the rowers' times came down by a minute or more between their first erg earlier in the season and one that was conducted Monday. The freshman boats are getting geared up for what will be the first time several of the team members have rowed competitively. "As practice goes on, the boats are being able to work better together than they did in the beginning", freshman Leslie Buenger said. "[Preparation for this weekend] is going good, we've been doing run throughs of the course." Most of the boats being rowed at this point are tentative, with Penn's lineups for this weekend still undetermined. However, Navy Day will give good insight into the women's prospects for the rest of the year as they prepare to cruise towards their first big race of the year, the Head of the Charles Regatta in Boston on October 24. The Head of the Charles attracts stiff competition from around the country. "It's hard to make any predictions because we haven't raced yet," Kirch said. "But we've got some good returning athletes and our senior captains ought to be helping us out well this weekend." Although the Quakers rowers are not yet sure how their team will fare this season, their enthusiasm is definitely high. "We're just really excited to get on the water and race," Berman said.