'Possibility' becomes reality for W. Crew

The Penn women's varsity eight knew there was a possibility for it to win this weekend, but it was a big surprise when Possibility, the Quakers' appropriately named boat, finished first in the Head of the Schuylkill Regatta. "It feels pretty good," senior Rebecca Rothman said. "It shows that within a week we improved our time and got faster." The Head of the Schuylkill was the culmination of a great fall season for the Quakers. Penn's eight pulled off a five-second win over Boston University this weekend, one week after losing to the Terriers by five seconds at the Head of the Charles in Boston. "Once we found out BU was in our race we were out to get them," Penn co-captain Loren Berman said. "That was our goal -- to beat them." Penn's second varsity boat took fourth in the club eights race this weekend, while its varsity four took eighth in the women's fours race. The Quakers' freshman eight took seventh in their race -- not a bad result considering that the eight lost its skeg, the stabilizing mechanism for the boat, midway through the race. "I think the mark of the fall season has been the different results between races," Penn coach Barb Kirch said. "Any time [the varsity eight] raced an opponent [twice], the result has been the same or a bigger win [in the rematch]." That's exactly what Penn is looking for as it prepares for the spring season, when the racing format will be shorter and faster than in the fall. The intensity of the racing is also upped in the spring since the boats will start together, as opposed to at staggered intervals as it is during the fall. Now that the Head of the Schuylkill has ushered in the end of the serious fall races, the less-than-serious races can begin. First in this series will be the Head of the Halloween on Friday. The varsity and freshman crews will dress in costume, mix randomly and race for the coveted Snickers Cup. The last race of the fall will be the Frostbite Regatta on November 13, which is mostly a warm-up to prepare crews to train for the spring season. Penn will row the varsity eight from this weekend and some pairs on the 2,000-meter Frostbite course. The final fall regattas aside, the goal for the Quakers is now to extend their success from the fall into the spring season. "I feel like we've had some great solid races but I think there's more there than we've been giving," Berman said. "We need to build our base of fitness and I'm sure we'll be doing that." Another thing that might help the Quakers is the recent purchase of a new Empacher eight; Empachers are some of the nicest, not to mention most expensive, boats currently made. "Part of the plan is to test [the new Empacher] against the Resolute and the Millennium," Kirch said. "The Millennium that was used this weekend, the donor didn't want to name it, so we named it the Possibility." Maybe the team should stick with this weekend's boat. After all, as the Quakers head into the new millennium, it looks like the spring season is full of possibilities.