This Sunday in Boston, the Penn heavyweight crew team learned the meaning of the phrase "too much of a good thing."
The varsity eight paid the price for intense aggression off the front end when they lost their rhythm and came in 27th out of 41 boats at the Championship Eight race of the Head of the Charles Regatta.
The men's four also suffered at the hands of what should have been a good thing.
As they were walking through the Loyola boat in front of them two minutes into the race when Loyola swerved and collided with the Quakers, costing them 10 to 15 seconds. Penn eventually finished 18th.
"We were disappointed in the fact that we had a collision," Penn junior John Linnehan said. "We could have done better."
The four did take some consolation in knowing that they rowed a solid race but fell victim to circumstances beyond their control.
"If we hadn't had the collision, we would have had a better race," Linnehan said. "We would have been more competitive with boats like Yale and Boston University."
On the other hand, for the men in the varsity eight, the disappointment intensified. They began the race rowing smoothly and powerfully, and at the first bridge were in 11th place, a much better position than the one in which they finished.
However, their aggressive pulling cost them their ability to move the boat together and things deteriorated.
"The first five minutes the boat was moving really well and we were all working together," junior Timothy Parks said. "But then we brought the rate up and were not being effective."
The subpar coordination may be a result of some difficulties the boat had to face this week.
"The last week we have been dealing with some injuries and some weather issues that stopped us from getting as much done on the water as we had planned," Parks said.
However, the weekend was not a total loss for Penn.
The freshman boat performed particularly well, placing sixth in its race -- only four seconds away from a third-place finish.
Overall, simply rowing in the prestigious Head of the Charles Regatta was an honor for Penn.
"The Head of the Charles is an incredible experience -- 200,000 people show up over the weekend and line the bridges" over Boston's Charles River, Linnehan said. "It's not like rowing just any other race."
The varsity eight also relishes the chance to learn from its mechanical problems down the stretch of the race in the coming weeks, especially since the fall season is the time to fix flaws in technique.
These factors -- along with the Quakers' determination according to Parks -- helped salvage Penn's weekend.
"Nobody gave in to the fact that it was not a great race," Parks said. "People refused to give up even though things were not going our way."
