Hwt. Crew earns third at Windermere Invite

Consider it a working vacation.

The Penn men's heavyweight crew team spent the weekend in sunny Palo Alto, Calif., where it defeated Stanford and lost to Cal-Berkeley and Navy in the Windermere Invitational.

"We don't want to come back," Penn senior Hoby Stuart said while in California. "It's 80 degrees and it's beautiful and it's a lot nicer than Philadelphia."

The Quakers beat the Cardinal by five seconds, lost to the Golden Bears by nine, and fell to the Midshipmen by a mere 0.39.

"Of all the races this weekend, that one was a barn-burner the entire way down the course," senior captain Brian Beck said of the Navy race.

"It was only about two feet" between the boats at the finish line," Penn coach Stan Bergman said. "That's a real close race."

Penn was leading the race with about 30 strokes to go but faltered in the last 10. The Midshipmen took advantage, and claimed the win.

The loss will weigh heavily on the team's mind when the Red and Blue face off against the Midshipmen again on April 26 at the Adams Cup in Annapolis, Md.

"I definitely think we can beat Navy," Beck said.

"I think that this weekend's race was a point that solidified the varsity eight and made us come together really well," Beck added.

Bergman said that there were "pluses and minuses" on the weekend. "The pluses were that we gained some confidence and the minuses that we lost a real tight race to Navy."

Sophomore James Lederman rowed at stroke seat for the first time, a position that came as something of a surprise to him.

"I didn't expect to be stroke this year," he said. "Earlier in the year I was wondering if I would make the first boat or not."

Stuart found the weekend's opposition to be a good mix of talent levels, led by "up and coming" Stanford and a Cal team that has won national championships the past four years.

Penn spent the weekend in boats borrowed from the Cardinal, as it was too costly and time-consuming to drive their own shells 3,500 miles across the country. But the team had no problems using the same Empacher model that they do at home.

"We took all our measurements for the boat and we spent a long time when we got [to California] making sure that everything matched up," Lederman said. "I was actually impressed with our first practice row. It felt very similar."

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