Lwt. Crew forced to adapt to tides in New York

At around 7 a.m. on Saturday, while most Penn students stagger back to their rooms after a night of Spring Fling partying, the men's lightweight crew team will be gearing up to face a very different type of liquid -- the water at the Orchard Beach Racecourse on the Long Island Sound in New York.

The Orchard Beach Course is severely influenced by the tides. At low tide, the course is mostly mud and little water. As a result, the Varsity race will take place at 7:48 a.m., the exact time of high tide, with the freshman race starting 20 minutes before and the junior varsity race starting 20 minutes after.

However, the Quakers are spending more time gearing up to race Yale, the defending champions of Eastern Sprints and International Racing Association Champs, than they worry about the unusually early race time.

Yale won first place in the varsity eight event and the freshman eight last year at Eastern Sprints, as well as placing second in the junior varsity eight.

"Yale is a team that is strong from top to bottom," Penn coach Mike Irwin said. "They are the team firing from all cylinders."

Penn will also face off against Columbia on Saturday. The Lions had a less successful season than Yale last year, with the varsity eight placing 10th at Eastern Sprints, losing to Penn by four seconds. However, while the boat struggled for most of the 2001-02 season, they managed to come back and finish fourth at IRAs.

"Columbia came on late last year and they don't want to [have to] do that again," Irwin said.

While the stakes may be high Saturday, Penn's attitude toward racing remains steady.

"Mental preparation will not change," freshman Greg Patcella said in an e-mail statement. "We will adjust the process to fit the tough competition to be put forth by Yale and Columbia."

Nor will the Quakers allow their intensity to be broken by the prospect of their first away race.

"The water is just as wet in NYC as it is in Philly," sophomore Stu Harty said in an e-mail. "We'll still row the same as we do at home."

Still, the opportunity to try out a different racecourse could be good experience for the whole team, especially the freshmen who are new to college racing.

"We look forward to experiencing what an unfamiliar course will feel like," freshman Tim Mahoney said.

Despite the added factors of traveling and racing against last year's defending champions, the Quakers' overarching goal remains the same -- to get a feel for the competition and prove themselves as strong program.

"We're going to take this race like every other race," Harty said. "Our goal is to get better and better each week and it doesn't matter who we're racing against."

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