Heavyweight Crew teeters at Sprints

For the Penn men's heavyweight crew team, the outcome of this year's Eastern Sprints was not what the had been hoped or envisioned.

Pitted against the rest of the Ivy League on Lake Quinsigamond in Worcester, Mass., the Quakers rowed to a fifth-place finish.

With a time of 5:33.96, the Red and Blue's varsity eight made the cut in their qualifying heat to advance to the Grand Finals. In this race, which determined the 2001 Ivy League champion, the Quakers crossed the line in 5:40.15.

"We went as fast as we could on Sunday," Penn senior commodore Doug Sieg said. "It's disappointing when you put so much time, effort and emotion into a race and come in fifth."

Princeton won with a time of 5:31.45, while Harvard finished second in 5:34.1'. Northeastern's 5:35.5' was good enough for third. Brown clocked in close behind at 5:35.59, while sixth-place Yale rounded out the field in 5:45.01.

"We got out with the rest of the crews, then Harvard, Brown, Northeastern and Princeton got up on us and we didn't pull it together to walk back on them," Penn varsity rower Tom Paradiso said. "We will face Northeastern [this] weekend, which [was] good motivation for us this week."

Penn's second varsity boat finished its heat with a time of 5:50.15.

This took the Quakers out of contention for the Grand Finals race. In the Petite Finals, they finished third behind first-place Cornell and second-place Harvard.

The Red and Blue will look to improve as they prepare to travel to the Charles River for a rematch against Northeastern this weekend. After that, the Quakers will face Cornell at home on May 26 before they wrap up the spring season with the national championships, the IRAs, on May 31 and June 1.

"While we finished where we were expected to, that does not mean that we are going to settle for finishing behind Harvard, Brown, Princeton and Northeastern," Penn senior captain Keith Sutter said. "We will come out ready to race Northeastern on Saturday and then against Cornell. They gave us a race to make the Grand Final this weekend and we race them at home in two weeks -- we are determined not to allow the margin to be as close."

With less than three weeks left to go, the Red and Blue will focus on increasing speed and finesse as they look to close out the season on a high note.

"We will let Coach [Stan] Bergman work his magic," Sieg said. "We have the greatest coach in the country and he will work with us these next three weeks to make us faster for the national championships."

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