W. Crew frosh end season at Belly of Carnegie Regatta

It has been a rocky fall season for the Penn freshmen women's crew. That's why the Quakers need to get into a groove for this weekend's Belly of the Carnegie Regatta at Princeton, the last race of the fall season. The Belly could give the freshmen a needed boost in what has been described by many members of the team as a season wrought with frustration. "For whatever reason we can't seem to be able to get it together on race day," Penn freshman coach Susan Seybolt said. If the Quakers have had trouble getting it together in previous races, this weekend might prove especially challenging. The Belly of the Carnegie requires that all boats enterd from a school be roughly even in speed, as the winner of the regatta is the team whose boats finish highest on average. But that doesn't mean that every school is planning on entering even boats. "I have boats that I like. I don't know if they're even or not," Seybolt said. "I actually have barely rowed [the boats] even. People have had so many conflicts [that] I've barely had people at practice -- so I've barely done it." No matter what the makeup of the boats is this Sunday, the freshmen must be hoping for better results than they've found in their other races this season. Penn finished 24th at the Head of the Charles Regatta, 15 places behind Yale, their nearest Ivy League competitor. Then at the Head of the Schuylkill Regatta, the Quakers lost their skeg -- the stabilizing mechanism for the boat -- early on in the race and ended up taking seventh on their home course. "We put a lot of pressure on ourselves for the Head of the Charles and I think that affected our performance," freshman Claire Manske said. "We have been able to row well, we just haven't been able to race well." This Sunday will be the last chance before the spring season for the Red and Blue to demonstrate that they have the depth and skill to execute a solid race. One of the determining factors for success this weekend will be whether or not the team has been able to develop the skills of the rowers who were inexperienced prior to this year. "There's a lot of talented, experienced people and a lot of talented non-experienced people who have improved so much over the last few months it's amazing," freshman Nicole Giuliani said. "We've had a good practice this week so I expect if we pull it all together we'll do really well."