Hwt. Crew edges out Big Red, looks ahead to IRAs

The Penn heavyweight crew team knew going into last Friday's Madeira Cup race on the Schuylkill River against Cornell that the Big Red were a little upset at the Quakers.

And now, the team from Ithaca, N.Y., has reason to be even more upset.

Just two weeks removed from edging out Cornell for a spot in the Grand Final at Eastern Sprints, the No. 7 Red and Blue (5-3, 4-2 Ivy League) once again crossed the finish line ahead of the No. 12 Big Red (5-3, 0-3).

"We led the race from beginning to end, but they were pressing us really hard the whole time," Penn senior captain Keith Sutter said. "They definitely came out full force. It was a relatively close race, and nobody blew anybody out of the water."

Penn's varsity eight boat took the cup for the seventh straight year with a time of 5:34.47, beating out the Cornell shell that came in at 5:35.2.

The Quakers have now outlasted the Big Red in the race for the Madeira Cup in 18 of the last 19 years.

Cornell has been in a drought as of late. The Big Red have posted an 0-3 record after opening the season 5-0.

But while its varsity eight continued to struggle, Cornell's other boats fared well, defeating the Quakers' shells in every other race of the day.

The Big Red took the second varsity eight race with a time of 5:44.8, defeating the Quakers by 3.8 seconds.

Cornell also took the varsity four with (4+) and without coxswain (4-) races by 17 and 45.6 seconds, respectively.

The wide margin in the 4- race was due to equipment failure suffered by Penn's shell.

The closest race of the day came in the freshman eight race, in which Cornell just managed to beat out the Quakers by four tenths of a second.

The other piece of hardware at stake last weekend -- the James Wray Memorial Trophy -- thus remained with Cornell for the second straight year.

The trophy goes to the overall winner of the varsity eight, second varsity eight and freshman eight races.

With a winning record secured in the dual-meet season, the Quakers now look for a strong performance in the last and most important meet of the year -- the Intercollegiate Rowing Association Championship Regatta.

The three-day event begins today and will be held on the Cooper River in Camden, N.J. The IRAs are collegiate rowing's version of the national championships.

"The expectations are to go out and race hard, because there is no tomorrow," Sutter said. "It's do or die this weekend."

The Quakers varsity eight boat will race in lane four this morning at 8:12 a.m. in the fourth and final men's varsity eight heat.

The battle for first place in the fourth heat is expected to be the most competitive among the varsity eight heats. University of California-Berkeley, Brown and Princeton are the heavy favorites to win heats one, two and three, respectively.

In Penn's heat are five other schools -- the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Marist, Northeastern, Dartmouth and UC-Davis.

Only Marist was not ranked in the end-of-the-season USRowing Collegiate Coaches Men's Eight Poll top 25 that was released two weeks ago.

But with the Quakers as the No. 7 seed, their only real concern is No. 4 Northeastern.

"I think [No. 10] Dartmouth is always a threat," Sutter said. "They're a great crew, they've only gotten faster as the year's gone on, so we're definitely not counting them out.

"But right now our major press is going to be for Northeastern."

The Huskies are the only team in the fourth heat that the Quakers faced during the dual-meet season.

And in that May 19 meeting on the Charles River in Boston, Penn upset Northeastern by the very narrow margin of 0.5 seconds.

"Those guys are real fired up after beating us at Sprints and then having us turn around and beat them in the [Burk] Cup race," Sutter said. "They are definitely going to come out."

The winner of each of the four heats will get an automatic bye to tomorrow's semifinals, giving all boats further incentive to race to their fullest potential in their morning heats. All other boats will compete in reps later today.

"Having one less race than the rest of the field is very advantageous in a long weekend of racing," Sutter said. "[Penn and Northeastern] are both going to be battling it out."

The Penn lightweight crew team will also be competing at this weekend's IRAs.

With the 2001 season ending this weekend, Sutter is hoping that the Quakers will be able to finish on a strong note.

"There's no we'll get them next week, we plan on getting faster as the year goes on,'" Sutter said. "This is it -- the last race.

"We plan on coming out, having three or four really strong races and putting together the best that we can."

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